An adventure in rabid videotape collecting, television history, and whatever else I feel like babbling about…

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So said the ads of the 1990s, and here, now, some 22 years or so after I should have gotten all that I could out of the system, I feel I have finally, finally reached that mythical “next level.” Bear with me for the duration of this post gang, because I’m about to incoherently babble about the quest and ultimate fulfillment of getting all that I possibly could out of my trusty Sega.

Now, you have no idea how much I love the Sega Genesis (known as the Sega Megadrive everywhere but in the US; it’ll always be a Genesis to me, deal with it bucky). Indeed, in the realm of my personal favorite video game consoles, the Genny is second only to the Nintendo Entertainment System; no two other systems hold quite such an esteemed place in this heart of mine, dubious honor that may be. In fact, the Genesis has the distinction of being the first console I ever purchased new with my own money, at the long-gone and much-missed Sun Electronics store that once resided a short distance from me. Ah, the 1990s!

Even though the Genesis alone is more than enough to rank among my top favorite systems, the fact that it can be expanded, and expanded mightily, only adds to the personal appeal. So then, just how do you go about beefin’ the console to maximum capacity? What more could possibly be added to what is generally considered one of the greatest video game systems of all-time? Well, by doing what so many gamers back in the 1990s did (or so Sega hoped), and what so many gamers continue to do (or so I hope): I’ve attached the Sega CD and Sega 32x add-ons to my console, that’s what I did! Look up above if you don’t believe me!

“y u doin this bro?”

It’s a question classic gamers probably wouldn’t ask, even though the CD and 32x add-ons, or more specifically their libraries, are often considered, well, kinda negligible. The gaming world at large, I’m not sure they’d get it, but since I give 0 about the current generation of consoles, and never stopped loving the systems I grew up with besides, this just feels right. Plus, this fits in to the current wave of 1990s nostalgia I’ve been riding as of late; even though I didn’t own these add-ons new back in the day, I still fully expect to continuously check my watch to make sure Boy Meets World hasn’t started yet whilst playing this big hulking mound of plastic.

“Wuts a cd 32x bro?”

As you may surmise, the Sega CD was an attachment that allowed for bigger, more powerful games and CD-quality soundtracks via, say it with me, compact discs. The 32x was a cartridge-based attachment that, as you also may surmise, gave the Genesis 32-bit capabilities and thus even bigger, more powerful games. Theoretically, anyway; general consensus is that neither attachment lived up to their potential on a regular basis, and I’m not sure I’d have been happy with them had I paid full price back in the day. Now though? There’s enough good stuff to make me feel I got my money’s worth – especially since I got ’em on the cheap years ago.

I had only limited experience with the add-ons prior; my cousin had both, and I recall once playing Sewer Shark on the CD and Star Wars Arcade on the 32x at his house, way back in 1995 or so. For all intents and purposes however, getting these attached to my Genesis was my first real experience with them, and therein lies my tale. So read on! (And please ignore some of the dust I neglected to clean before snapping photos; frankly, you’re lucky I even gave a cursory soft-cloth wipe-down before taking pictures.)

Anyone reading almost undoubtedly has to know what a Sega Genesis looks like. For the .01% of you that don’t, up above is a model 1 Sega Genesis – bare, naked, unbeefed. This isn’t the Sega that I regularly use, and thus isn’t quite the subject of this post. Rather, this is just a spare I’ve wound up with. What, you thought I was gonna unplug all of the attachments just to get a photo of my “playing” Sega without the, as you would say, accoutrements? Think again, chief.

Actually, the system above was the console that the CD and 32x attachments originally came with. I picked the whole set up cheap at a thrift store in late-2010 – and then proceeded to do nothing with any of it. Despite the included mess of cords, I still didn’t think I had all of the necessary attachments, and it promptly became part of the messy mosaic of boxes that made (make) up my increasingly cluttered basement. I never regretted the purchase, because hey, most of the stuff was there, and the price was definitely right (especially compared to the climbing 16-bit prices nowadays), but it wasn’t until recent months that I decided to do something with the lot.

Y’see, the Genesis that I normally use, another model 1 which I picked up years ago at a rummage sale (to the best of my recollection), I’ve kept hooked up as my “playing” unit for quite some time. The room where I have it includes a big, beautiful, vintage Sony Trinitron CRT TV, with built-in speakers on its sides and a stand that also serves as another speaker. It’s my “go-to” classic gaming TV, and for awhile, I had a myriad of consoles daisy chained to it. Eventually I decided to declutter, and instituted a personal “only one system at a time!” rule for the TV, with the beater Genesis getting the nod. That’s the place it has held ever since, and luckily, my pretentious little rule doesn’t preclude add-ons, since it’s still technically only one console. This is important stuff, so pay attention.

I went with the Genesis as my console of normative choice simply because I have stacks and stacks of games (a library that includes more than a few all-time favorites), I’ve got plenty of spare consoles should this one die (yeah, like these things won’t outlive us), and there’s a lot of bases covered by it; legit 16-bit gaming, of course, but also 8-bit via the Sega Master System converter (the SMS is a system I absolutely adore and thus this aspect was a huge factor in my decision), plus, needless to say, now CD and 32x games are in the mix, too. Sega was the king of add-ons in the 1990s, and while that ultimately had a large part in crippling their future (more on that momentarily), for me right now, I love the options at my disposal.

So, as I steadily decided to expand my “playing” Genesis, I simply removed from that thrift store buy what I wanted to use on my ‘good’ console. I initially didn’t intend on using all of it, which I’ll explain in a bit.

When I bought my first Genesis new way back when, it was a model 2; a smaller, sleeker, more streamlined beast. I loved it, and still have it of course, but even then I liked the look of the first model more. There are certain positives and negatives regarding both variations, though the model 1 is easily my preferred choice – especially since the the SMS converter won’t fit on a model 2!

Though not really the subject of this post, I mentioned that whole model 1/model 2 thing just now because the Master System adapter, the Power Base Converter, really did play a part when I was thinkin’ ’bout beefin.’

Via this converter, my SMS library has probably gotten just as much playtime as my Genesis games have. Now, I have an actual SMS, but again, that would require two consoles being out, which would start me on the slippery slope towards cluttering up mah space again. The Power Base Converter does pretty much everything a ‘real’ SMS can do (no built-in game, though), and aside from a few (but just a few) games not liking a Genesis controller (gotta use a legit SMS pad for Bomber Raid, dawg), I have no issues with it. Indeed, I love the lil’ feller, and it fills me with a burning rage that it kinda flies under the radar when the subject of Genesis add-ons are brought up at sophisticated dinner parties and whatnot.

So what was my concern regarding the converter? From how I understand it, the adapter basically acts as a pass-through, and all of the stuff to make an SMS game ‘go’ is already in the Genesis. However, when you attach a 32x, which allows you to play regular Genesis games through it (lest you have to un-hook & re-hook the thing every time the 16-bit fancy strikes you), I guess it somehow disables the whatever that allows the Power Base Converter to function. This hurts me deep, even if plugging the converter into the 32x would make the set-up the ugliest monstrosity in console history. The Genny ain’t exactly winning any awards in that area when all beefed up like this, anyway.

Simply put, taking the Power Base Converter out of the equation was not an option. This was non-negotiable. Luckily, I worked out a solution that, while still requiring some unplugging and whatnot, at least keeps my SMS-capabilities on the table; I will not bar myself from readily-accessible Rambo: First Blood Part II! (The SMS game I mean, not the movie – though I won’t bar myself from the flick, either.)

What got this whole “Ah wanna upgrade mah Sega” thing started was actually the CD. Not Sega’s CD attachment, mind you, but rather the Turbografx-16’s. Or rather, the later TurboDuo combo console. I had been reflecting on my good fortune in obtaining the Duo several years back (it was still pretty expensive, but not “hold your head in your hands and weep bitterly” expensive like it is now), when I realized, hey, I play my Genesis much more than anything right now, so why not take the Sega CD plunge and expand a bit?

My first thought was to pick up a model 1 Sega CD, which was a big hulking unit with a motorized disc tray, and which sat directly beneath the Genesis. I had a chance to pick one of those up (with yet another Genesis) several years back too, at a decent-compared-to-now price, but unlike my TurboDuo, I failed to use my bean and decided against it. Mistake.

In all honestly, at first I didn’t even think of using the model 2 Sega CD that I already had and was currently languishing somewhere in my basement. Eventually, the gears started turning in my noodle, I dug the thing out, and I went to figure out how I could make it “go.” Initially, I only intended it as a placeholder until I could find a halfway-reasonable model 1 CD, and while I won’t say that option is completely off the table, I’d have to come across an original unit in-person and for a great price to make me drop some of my increasingly limited dough on it.

The model 1 Sega CD was first released in the US in 1992, and a year or so later, the redesigned model 2 CD came. Primarily intended for use with the Genesis model 2, the second iteration of the Sega CD used a pop-up disc tray lid and sat next to the Genesis. Luckily for me, this revised Sega CD works just fine with the model 1 Genesis. (Which makes sense, since it came with one when I first brought it home!)

As I said before, when I originally bought my Genesis/CD/32x set-up from the thrift store, I didn’t think I had all the right cables and whatnot. Just looking at the back of this Sega CD, the numerous ports had me confused. Sure, the power supply is self-explanatory (and luckily mine came with one; same as a model 1 Genesis power supply), but the rest? Separate AV jacks? “Mixing?” What have I gotten into?! No wonder I threw all this stuff in a box and let it sit for almost 7 years!

Fortunately, a quick look online revealed that I did indeed have the bare minimum to get this thing running. All I had to do? Connect it to the Genesis’ expansion port, plug the power supply in, and bingo! The Genesis handled the rest! Cool winnins! (There are some metal RF shielding plates that came with the CD, which you screw in the bottom of the Genesis to both better prevent RF interference and to attach it more securely to the CD. I had these and did indeed attach them, but they’re not absolutely necessary.)

The Sega CD had garnered a decently-sized library before being discontinued in 1996, though oddly enough, as soon as I got mine hooked up, I was sort of at a loss as to what I was really going to go after (barring one exception). The fact my player had been sitting around my basement for nearly 7 years had me wondering if the thing even still worked. A quick trip to a nearby thrift shop yielded me a cheap copy of Bill Walsh College Football, purchased solely for testing purposes (I’m not a college football fan, and frankly, I’m not huge on 16-bit football games in general). Maybe not the best demonstration of the CD’s power, but it told me that my Sega CD was indeed operational.

My first real Sega CD game, as far as one I wanted goes, was Sol-Feace, a terrific horizontal shooter that was actually a pack-in with the original release of the Sega CD. While maybe not a stellar showcase of the CD’s abilities (except for the soundtrack, which I dig), it’s still a blast, and saves me the trouble of tracking down the Genesis cartridge port (titled Sol-Deace; Phil Moore always had fun saying that title on Nick Arcade).

After that was the CD port of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Unlike many Sega CD games, which were just enhanced versions of Genesis games, Dracula is actually a totally different game from the ‘regular’ edition. Featuring actual clips from the movie, digitized characters, and backgrounds that rotate as you pass through them (think Fleischer Popeye), it’s an impressive title for 1993, and unlike the last two games, a real showcase of what the Sega CD can do. Okay, technically it’s a mediocre, single-plane Beat-‘Em-Up, but it looks so neat that I wound up being fond of it nevertheless.

But actually, it was Final Fight CD, which you’re looking at live and in action above (in a shot crummily taken of it playing on my TV because I don’t emulate; it looks better in real life, trust me!), that was the main driving force behind getting me to hook up the CD. Y’see, I’m a Beat’ Em Up junkie; it’s quite possibly my favorite genre of video games. Heck, I pretty much bought the TurboDuo just so I could play the Japan-exclusive port of Double Dragon II. So yeah, Final Fight CD might as well be considered my personal “killer app” here. My conclusion? It’s a very good port, infinitely superior to the SNES version, and with a great, kickin’ soundtrack. My only real issue with the game is the same issue I take with all Beat-‘Em-Ups of its ilk: It tends to be cheap. The difficulty doesn’t so much ramp as it sucker punches you. I’m always up for a challenge, but I find that aspect of the game severely irritating. As far as the Genesis goes, I find both Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage 2 to be superior fighters.

Still, despite some warts, Final Fight CD is my favorite title thus far on the Sega CD. Yes, it was worth hooking the add-on up for!

Currently on the want list: Even though I’ve never been huge on the normal Genesis edition (I’m firmly in the Super Nintendo camp when it comes to games based on the movie), I do intend on picking up the expanded version of Batman Returns. Also in the same vein, and because I’m, as previously stated, a Beat ‘Em Up junkie, the expanded Sega CD port of Cliffhanger is one I’d like to add to the library. Star Wars: Rebel Assault, the PC version of which I grew up with, is a title I’d really like to get, even though intellectually I know it was never a very good game, even back then. Also, Afterburner III, because I do loves me some Afterburner. The Sega CD library is littered with full-motion video titles (a real relic of the ’90s!), and while the thought of most of them make my eyes glaze over, obtaining one or both Mad Dog McCree titles is appealing, simply because, like Rebel Assault, I grew up with with Mad Dog II on the PC. (Unlike Rebel Assault though, I always found Mad Dog II pretty fun.) And of course, I needs me some Sonic CD, too!

Finally, and for purely cosmetic reasons, I bought the extender piece that attaches to the far-left bottom of the Genesis and slides into the CD base. It doesn’t do anything but make the whole set-up look better; otherwise, the edge of the model 1 Genesis hangs off the side of the model 2 CD. Still plays fine, but looks ugly. Hence, extender piece. I wugs u extendo peece.

The more I think about it, the more I think that a particularly appealing thing about the Sega CD is that it’s such an early-1990s throwback, and not just in release date, either. Back then, CD was this new, wondrous format; just hearing “CD-ROM” today reminds me of getting the latest Sierra adventure games for the PC on CD – 3.5 floppies seemed so outdated after that! To get that same experience on a console, it had to be pretty cool for cutting-edge gamers of the time, and it’s still fun to revel in now, even if the revolutionary aspects have, of course, dimmed in the years since.

Ah, and that brings us to the the Sega 32x. The infamous Sega 32x. An attachment conceived to give the Genesis 32-bit capabilities, extend the life of the console, and bridge the gap between the Genesis and looming Sega Saturn, the 32x could very well be (and has been) considered the opening salvo in Sega’s demise as a console-maker. The add-on was a notorious flop, with only about 40 games released for it, and it was only on the market for 2 years or so. Even worse, it destroyed much confidence in Sega as a company, and coupled with some unwise decisions and relative commercial failure of the Sega Saturn (commercial failure, mind you, because it certainly has a huge cult following), Sega could never quite get back on track, even when they should have with the terrific Sega Dreamcast.

‘Course, in my case, I got the 32x so many years after all that, that there were only two real factors in deciding whether I should extricate it from its resting place and hook it up to my ‘real’ Genesis: 1) Were there enough games to even make it worth the effort? And, 2) what about my Power Case Converter? As I said before, that thing apparently won’t run whilst plugged in to the 32x (however, and also as I said before, you can run regular Genesis cartridges through it no problem, except for Virtua Racing, which the 32x has its own port of anyway). Like I mentioned earlier, rendering the Power Base Converter useless was non-negotiable in my eyes. I eventually found a not-perfect-but-livable solution, which I’ll explain in a bit.

(Like the Sega CD, the 32x has metal plates you’re supposed to install inside the Genesis cartridge slot, and while I have them, you don’t absolutely need them – also just like the Sega CD. This is a good thing, because they would hamper my just-mentioned SMS-solution, and besides, I don’t know where I put the things anyway.)

You know, even though there are far fewer games in the 32x library than there is the CD, there were a handful titles that I wanted to play more than any other, save Final Fight CD. Namely, Star Wars Arcade, Doom, and Virtua Fighter.

Star Wars Arcade was a launch title for the 32x in 1994. Based on the 1993 arcade game (as opposed to the 1983 vector Atari arcade game), it’s a very good space-shooter, and an excellent demonstration of the 32x’s polygon abilities. Plus, it was the one 32x game I played back in the day. Still, I haven’t spent a ton of time with this one yet.

Doom, on the other hand, has gotten far more playtime than I expected. I heard conflicting stories about this port, from it being good to it being, uh, not. And you know, even though the music is weak, the framerate sometimes stutters, there are levels missing, and some save states are desperately needed, for a time I could not get enough of this game! *I* think it’s a good port, even if, technically it’s not a great one. Plus, while it may be anathema to admit this, I’ve always preferred Wolfenstein 3D to Doom; since there was no port of the former on the 32x, the latter wins by default.

But as far as 32x favorites go, I think I have to give the edge to Virtua Fighter (above, again in a sad, off-the-TV shot), a terrific port of the revolutionary 1993 arcade game. Using polygonal models, it may not look like much now, but it’s a fantastic demonstration of just what the 32x could do when harnessed properly. It even compares quite well to the later Sega Saturn port! There was a time when I was big into the 3D one-on-one fighters, so this version of Virtua Fighter really does take me right back. Plus, I always wished that Sega had made a big beefed up Genesis port using the same technology they did for Virtua Racing; it never happened (though an okay, albeit 2D, port of Virtua Fighter 2did show up late in the Genesis lifecycle), so this cart satisfies that ‘hunger’ somewhat.

Currently on the want list:Mortal Kombat II received a 32x port that’s seemingly pretty good, which is fortunate, since I love the regular Genesis version. Furthermore, there are well-regarded ports of Afterburner and Space Harrier that I definitely want. Knuckles Chaotix seems like an interesting Sonic spin-off, and the masochist in me wants to try Motocross Championship, even though it’s supposedly one of the worst things ever – and Youtube vids seem to bear that out. Also, I wouldn’t say no to Spider-Man: Web of Fire, should I find it cheap at a yard sale (yeah, right). Yes, there are fewer personal “wanted” games for the 32x than there are for the CD, but truth be told, the ones I want for the 32x I want more. Go figure!

As you may well imagine, running all of this results in a real mess of wires, not to mention three separate power adapters. Look up above if y’all don’t believe me! And, the 32x was a real pain to get hooked up satisfactorily. You can’t just “plug it in” like the Sega CD. I didn’t think I had all the necessary cables here either, though it turns out I was only missing one – the most important one (figures). Online searches on what exactly I needed wound up making my head swim, especially when they got into what was needed to get true stereo sound out of a 32x plugged into a model 1 Genesis (which only outputs mono sound). I’m usually pretty good at figuring these things out myself, but here, after numerous tries, I kept finding myself hopelessly confused.

So, here’s what you need for the 32x:

1 – A power adapter, of course. The 32x uses the same style as the Genesis model 2. Mine came with one, and even if it hadn’t, they’re easily found.

2 – Genesis 2-style AV or RF cables. Mine came with an RF box, which was fine with me until I realized I was gonna need AVs not only for better picture (remember, I wasn’t using the shielding plates, which did result in some irritating static), but also for a very specific reason I’m coming to. A quick trip to eBay yielded me some (cheap) AVs, though I soon learned the hard way that normal Genesis 2 stereo AV cables don’t work; you get picture but no sound with them plugged into the TVs AV ports. Nope, here you gotta have mono Genesis 2 AVs in this situation. Evidently they came with the 32x originally. So there went a bit more money for the cause, but they worked. Of course, you’ll only get mono sound in this scenario, but stereo isn’t that important to me here, and besides, figuring that aspect out takes me back to head-swimmin’ territory. Enough of that noise.

3 – Here’s what I didn’t originally have, and also what resulted in the most confusion on my part: The 32x AV mix cable. You see, you have to route from the Genesis AV port to the 32x with this cable in order to see everything correctly, via the “AV out” port on the Genesis and the “AV in” port on the 32x. Not so hard to understand, except the Genesis 1 and the Genesis 2 use different AV ports, and the model 2 port is the same one as found on the 32x. So, the 32x originally came with an adapter that fit the cable into the Genesis 1. It sounds so simple now, but figuring out what people were talking about, again, had my head swimming. I actually had to go to a video game forum and ask where I was at with what I had. Since the original adapters for this cable are pricey nowadays, I opted for a third party cable that’s specifically built to connect the Genesis 1 to the 32x, and I’ve had no complaints.

So, what about my beloved Power Base Converter? Just how was I gonna play SMS games without doing some serious un-hooking? Well, it’s not an ideal situation, but since I now have AV cables for the 32x, and thus normally run all of my Genesis-needs through those, I simply plugged and left my model 1 RF switchbox into the TV, and whenever I feel the need for some SMS, I’ll take out the 32x, unhook the AV cables from the Genesis, plug the RF cable back in, and have at it. No, it’s not as quick and easy as I’d like, but the effort is fairly minimal, and besides, I can still keep all of my stuff in one location, on top of my big honkin’ TV.

And so, there it be: A model 1 Sega Genesis, loaded, cocked and ready to rock, with a Sega CD and Sega 32x attached, and though not pictured, a Power Base Converter at the ready. Yes, it looks like a big plastic lump sitting on top of my TV. No, I don’t care; in one sitting I can play Rambo III, Virtua Fighter, Final Fight CD and Vigilante if I want, and that’s a thing of beauty.

You know, I was there for the tail-end of the 8-bit era, but basically grew up during the 16-bit generation, not to mention the 32/64-bit years. After that, my interests progressively waned generation-by-generation. But 8-bit and 16-bit, that’s where my gaming heart always truly stayed; I upgraded over the years, sure, but I never stopped loving the consoles and/or eras I grew up with. Since most of those formative-gaming-years took place in the 1990s, man, this beefy monstrosity of a console really does take me back, even if I didn’t actually own most of it when it was new.

And on the subject of the 1990s, I’ve come to consider the Sega Genesis the definitive 1990s console. Let me explain: I’m not necessarily saying it’s the best console of the 1990s; that’s of course subjective, and I absolutely adore the Super Nintendo, which was my first system ever (Christmas of 1992, baby!). Plus, the 1990s also held the 32/64-bitters, and it’s safe to say the Sony Playstation dominated the second-half of the decade handily. (Though for sheer late-1990s-ness, the Nintendo 64 seems to fit to me, too.)

But when I think 1990s gaming, the Genesis defines so much of what comes to mind. Here’s a system that hit the US in 1989, and stuck around until 1998 or so. (Wikipedia says 1999!) The sleek, black console itself, sure, it looks like a product of the decade (even if it technically wasn’t when regarding my preferred model 1), but also the many different trends and styles of gaming it demonstrated. From the 8-bit sensibilities (with 16-bit graphics) of the early titles, to Sonic, to the innovative, technically-impressive stuff being produced in the later years.

And beyond the games themselves, there was the ‘aura’ of the console; the loud, in-your-face marketing (“Blast Processing,” “SEGA!”) and general aimed-at-adults attitude. It all seems so overtly 1990s now. And of course, it’s also the additional features (some might say gimmicks) such as the Sega Channel, and, naturally, Sega CD and 32x add-ons, that all make up the “1990s-ness” of the Genesis. Sega ultimately wound up shooting themselves in the foot by doing “too much” with the system, but as an artifact of the mid-1990s, man, this beefed-up console just screams “1995!!” to me. I love it!

Looking for a succinct picture to sum up my super-charged Sega Genesis? This one right here seems to fit the bill. The classic 16-bit Sega Genesis, being upgraded to the aforementioned “NEXT LEVEL.” In one system I can take part in genuine 16-bit greatness, venture into the then-fairly-new world of CD-ROM, take a peak into the future with 32-bit gaming, or take a look back at the past with 8-bit gaming; how cool is that?! Do I need any more reasons to keep all this on top of my Trinitron for the foreseeable future? I posit that I do not.

Remember a bit over a month ago, when I babbled about my super cool budget Bela Lugosi DVD collection? You dont?! Well, that hurts me deep. Anyway, in that article, I mentioned my desire to review some locally-hosted Bela Lugosi, my attempt at a post regarding Invisible Ghost on The Ghoul, and my eventual termination of the whole project. I also mentioned my initial choice of Invisible Ghostover The Ghoul’s presentation The Devil Bat, which I soon came to regret. (The Invisible Ghost episode just didn’t give me enough to work with, y’see.)

Well, it’s rectification time! I dug out the VHS recording I made of The Devil Bat via WBNX TV-55’s revived The Ghoul Show way back in January of 2000, and needless to say, that’s our subject for today.

Even better, this is our first real episode of The Ghoul seen here at the blog! Oh sure, we saw 1982’s Poltergeist on the program, but that wasn’t really a Ghoul show, not the way it was meant to be, anyway. And yes, we did take a brief look at his 1998 Santa Claus episode, but that article wasn’t dedicated solely to him. Nope, this is our first real foray into the show that made up many, many of my Friday nights.

And no kidding, as soon as that opening montage above popped up on-screen (“IT’S THE GHOUL SHOWWWOW,” as performed by local band Destination), I was right back to almost-14-year-old me, relaxing on the couch on a Friday night at 11:30 PM. Powerful nostalgia, this one is.

Unlike Invisible Ghost, which had a lot of content but not much I could adequately write about, this episode is an example of The Ghoul Show as I prefer to remember it. There’s a few skits, but most of the host segments are just studio-based screwing around, which, in my opinion, was when The Ghoul was at his best. This is laid-back, fun, Friday-night entertainment, courtesy of Ron Sweed’s legendary horror host.

You know what’s funny? I recall watching this episode as it aired (and as this recorded, obviously), but prior to pulling this tape out, I couldn’t remember nearly anything about it. And to be frank, I am 99.999% positive I never watched it again afterwards. This means that when I sat down to finally convert my VHS recording to DVD for posterity (a conversion that came out beautifully, thanks to my cute lil’ 6-head VCR), all of it was essentially new to me. This is about as close to recreating those Friday nights of my teen years as I can manage in this day and age.

I’m serious. That sense of anticipation for the weekly dose of Ghoul Power, it all came flooding back as I watched this, a feeling I wasn’t expecting to be nearly as powerful as it was. Everything just clicked this episode, making it a terrific example of just what I loved so much about those Friday nights over a decade ago. This isn’t high-art, nor was it supposed to be; this was (is) legit kick-off-the-weekend entertainment, Cleveland-style!

One thing I really liked right off the bat: there was a proper introductory host segment. Y’see, for many episodes, there’d be the opening montage, and then typically, a silly skit, apropos of nothing in particular but fun nonetheless. Why are there streamers and confetti all over The Ghoul in the screenshot above? Because it was his birthday weekend! Needless to say, that sets the tone for the rest of the episode. The show was always fun (well, maybe not always, when you take the “Sunday era” into account), but there’s a real “party” mood permeating this one, for obvious reasons.

We’ll get to all of that in due time, but first, the movie…

1940’s The Devil Bat, one from Bela Lugosi’s poverty row output, in which he produces giant killer bats to attack his enemies. Less than a decade removed from the release of Dracula, and Bela was (mostly) relegated to doing films like this. On paper, it sounds downright insulting. And yes, it’s the kind of movie that should be so far beneath Bela, the script wouldn’t have been offered to him in the first place. Things didn’t work out that way though; Bela was typecast as Dracula somethin’ awful, and his heavy Hungarian accent didn’t help matters, either. So, as the 1940s dawned, he was increasingly forced to take projects like this one. Befitting a man of his stature? Not really. But, films like this kept his name visible to the public and money in his pockets.

Saying all of that kinda does a disservice to the film and Bela’s acting, however. No, it’s not the most highly-regarded thing he ever put out, but it IS immensely entertaining, and to Bela’s credit, he gave the role his all (he always did, no matter how weak the material). I can’t say this movie wouldn’t have been fun without him, but with him, it is undeniably a blast. But then, anything with Lugosi is worth at least a cursory glance, just because it’s Bela.

This exact broadcast was without a doubt my first time seeing The Devil Bat. The Ghoul had a wide-range of horror and sci-fi films during the “Friday era” of the show. Stuff as old (or older) as this or as recent as the 1990s could and would be shown. Because I was always a “classic movie” buff, flicks like this one were the most up my alley. And yet, as I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog, The Devil Bat didn’t really do it for me then. As a result, it left a sour taste in my mouth that lasted for years; it’s only in more recent times that I’ve fallen in love with it. Maybe it just didn’t hit me in the right mood that night. Or maybe it had to do with a couple factors regarding the version aired during this broadcast, which I’ll explain momentarily. I don’t know, but the fact is I didn’t care much about the film then. Luckily, I do now. Better late than never!

Bela plays Dr. Paul Carruthers (given Bela’s accent, he doesn’t seem like much of a “Carruthers,” but whatever), who is not only the town doctor, but also a chemist for the local cosmetics company (“Heath Cosmetics”). Sounds like a plush gig? Not for Carruthers. Turns out the cosmetic company has made a fortune from Carruthers’ products, and Carruthers, uh, hasn’t. Carruthers himself is really to blame for the situation; when the company was first getting started, he asked for money up front for his concoction(s), rather than a buying a share of stock. This, needless to say, turned out to be a huge mistake, and he’s been salty ever since.

(However, while Carruthers is at fault for the initial decision, the company owners, Heath and Morton, tend to needlessly rub it in – even when they give him a $5000 bonus, it’s a pittance compared to what the company is actually earning.)

Just like any rational person with a grievance against their employers would do, Carruthers has decided the best course of action is revenge. Copying machines weren’t around for him to sit his derriere on yet, and he doesn’t seem like the witty-limerick-on-the-bathroom-wall kinda guy, which means that the only logical choice left is to create giant killer bats to carry out his revenge. I mean, duh!

Using electronic impulses or some crap like that, he enlarges one to big honkin’ size, which is in addition to training it to attack upon smelling a certain aftershave lotion, of Carruthers’ own design naturally. A killer bat prepared to tear you up is one thing, but it’s so much worse when it’s the size of a large dog.

You see where this is going, don’t you? Carruthers tricks members of the Heath and Morton families into wearing his special aftershave lotion (ostensibly as a test before marketing), and then releases the titular creature from his own personal belfry (every mad scientist should have one), which then exacts Carruthers revenge for him.

Naturally, you can’t have a big giant bat flying around killing people for very long before the press starts nosing around. And sure enough, two big city reporters (one of whom is wonderfully nicknamed “One Shot”) soon waltz in for a scoop, and eventually put a stop to the whole thing. Well, one of them does; the other is basically comic relief (One Shot, of course).

Before the ordeal is over, you’ll be treated to shots of a rubber bat attacking people, a silly fake photo shoot, a couple of prerequisite love interests, a wildly ineffective (but surprisingly friendly towards the press) police chief, a bitchy newspaper editor, and enough outdated 1940s jargon to make you feel better about life. Plus, you know, Bela Lugosi.

With only a bit over an hour in running time, there’s not much time to screw around, and thus, The Devil Bat moves at a pretty brisk pace. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s charmingly cheap, and it comes highly recommended by your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter. And as we all know, my recommendation is of tantamount importance. Otherwise, I wouldn’t give it!

“W-w-what am I lookin’ at?!”

The Ghoul did not have access to the greatest print of The Devil Bat in the world. Not so hard to understand; nowadays we’ve got a couple really fantastic “official” versions on DVD/Blu-ray, but back then, you were limited to whatever had been making the rounds for decades. The Devil Bat is in the public domain, which means I could project it on the side of my garage while figuratively (literally?) thumbing my nose at Hollywood cause there ain’t no copyright on the film no more.

Beyond the expected scratchy, splicey nature of the print, the picture-quality was also pretty fuzzy – it almost looks like it was sourced from VHS. Which, fine, whatever, public domain and all that. More distressingly, however, is the fact that the picture is often incomprehensibly dark. (See: above.) No joke, there are long stretches of the film that, had I not already been familiar with it, would have left me utterly lost upon this latest viewing. Back in January 2000, this was perhaps one of the reasons the film didn’t endear itself to me.

Also, editing. You didn’t really tune into The Ghoul to watch a movie; the movie was just kinda fodder for humorous sound effects and whatnot. The Ghoul would pack so much into his host segments, that the film often felt like an afterthought, and the editing to make it fit into the timeslot sometimes made that abundantly clear. More often than not, a movie would be so chopped up, following it was all but impossible. The longer the movie, the less it would make sense on the show. Mind you, that’s not a complaint either; that was actually part of the fun.

At only about 68 minutes, The Devil Bat should have fit into the 2-hour timeslot allotted to this episode fairly unscathed. As it turned out, it’s easier to follow than a lot of movies shown by The Ghoul, but there are noticeable chunks missing, and some of them are pretty important. That fake photo shoot I mentioned a bit ago? Yeah, that’s not actually present in this broadcast, which thus renders some of the later actions (that are present in this broadcast) as pretty head-scratching to a first-time viewer. This probably didn’t help endear the film to me back then, either. Or maybe I just didn’t like it, I don’t remember.

What I don’t get is why there needed to be any movie-editing at all. Y’see, this episode runs just under 1 hour 50 minutes (not so unusual; The Ghoul always started on time, but when an episode ended wasn’t always set in stone). They couldn’t have filled out that unused 10 minutes with the rest, or at least more, of the movie? I don’t get it.

But like I said, when watching The Ghoul, the movie was usually there strictly as fodder. That is, the various video audio drop-ins, the stuff Ghoulardi was doing way back in 1963 basically.

For The Devil Bat, there’s some funny audio bits; the Froggy “hi ya gang! Hi ya hi ya!” used whenever a close-up of a real bat is shown is great, as are the expected burps whenever someone takes a drink, incessant groaning whenever someone is killed, etc. On the video front, during a typical newspaper-headlines montage, clips of Cleveland Browns-related articles are inserted.

My favorite bit of movie-mockery here is something that The Ghoul was fond of using during his WBNX run: the fake-factoid bubbles. Remember Pop-Up Video? It was like that. Two examples of the phenomenon are, needless to say, pictured above. I loved these things back then, and I love them even more now; I had no idea who Dick Feagler was back in 2000, but I sure do now, which of course helps me actually get the gag. These bubbles aren’t as rampant during The Devil Bat as they were in other movies shown on the program, but I did love what was here.

So, back to the show as a whole. As previously mentioned, it was The Ghoul’s birthday weekend, and even though it wasn’t stated during the episode itself, Ron “The Ghoul” Sweed was turning 50. The big 5-0! Of course there was celebration afoot!

This was demonstrated at the end of the introductory host segment; the crew threw The Ghoul a surprise birthday party! (Hence, the streamers and whatnot all over him throughout the show.) I have no idea if this was a real surprise party, or just something cooked up for the cameras, and there’s not a whole lot to the bit other general frivolity. But again, it sets the tone for the rest of the episode.

(I want that 60th anniversary King Kong poster in the background above, by the way.)

A short, first commercial-break bit in which Froggy is caught looking through the dirty movies at B-Ware Video (he can’t find any with frogs in them), is then grabbed by Sick Eddie (who owned the store), thrown across the room, and then has the door closed on him – and I do mean on him. As Froggy skits go, it wasn’t one of the more elaborate ones, but then, any Froggy destruction is fine by me.

B-Ware Video was in Lakewood, a pretty far drive for me, and thus I only made it there once, for a Ghoul appearance in the Spring of 2000. The place was very impressive though, with a ton of rare, obscure movies for sale or rent – not the stuff you’d find on Best Buy’s shelves. It was fantastic. It was the kind of brick-and-mortar store that the internet, much to my chagrin, made obsolete in the following years (I *believe* B-Ware closed in ’05), but I’m certainly glad to have visited the establishment that one time.

A very funny segment in which, as response to a viewer email stating “Big Chuck sucks,” The Ghoul claims he and Big Chuck are tight, and then pays “tribute” by showing the same two pictures of Chuck over and over while “Wind Beneath My Wings” plays and shots of The Ghoul sobbing uncontrollably are inserted between it all. This all goes on for just a bit too long.

On paper, it’s a bit that may confuse first-time or otherwise not-in-the-know viewers, especially if they happened to tune in while it was already in progress. Some may even claim it to be “stupid.” There’s no doubt it’s of only the thinnest premise. So why can’t I stop laughing at it?

(It’s important to note that The Ghoul and The Big Chuck & Lil’ John Show were scheduled against each other at that time. In the hype leading up to his television return in the Summer of 1998, I recall The Ghoul stating he hoped people would use their VCRs to watch both shows.)

A “Soul of Ghoul” skit. The premise of these, and there were quite a few of them, was that the Soul of Ghoul, a black guy, was the polar opposite of The Ghoul in every way (“Yo Yo Yo” instead of “Hey Hey Hey,” white beard and mustache, black wig, etc.), and would constantly harass him in a Froggy-like style. In this installment, it’s the classic “shoe polish” trick, in which Soul of Ghoul places the substance on a telephone receiver (remember those?), and gets The Ghoul to answer it, with the expected results.

Somehow, the real meaning behind these skits went RIGHT over my head back then, though I of course get it now: these were a shot at Son of Ghoul. If the initials didn’t make it clear, The Ghoul’s declaration at the start of each sketch of “Now the brothers are rippin’ me off!” makes the message doubly-obvious. (Nowadays, he’d probably have to word that differently, too.)

At the time, I didn’t know about the legal troubles between the two in the years prior. At least, I don’t remember knowing about them then. I’d catch little shots from one against the other on their respective shows, but as I recall it, I never took those as anything more than a friendly rivalry kind of thing. I’d learn the truth later.

My stance on the matter? I grew up as a fan of both hosts, I liked the different comedic styles both brought to the table (which means that, to be honest, I don’t really agree with the actual premise behind the “Soul of Ghoul” bits), and I remain a fan of both today. I wish things had played out differently between them, but that’s all I’m going to (or really, can) say about the situation.

Not so much a segment as a returning-from-commercials bumper, but nevertheless, with Groundhog Day right around the corner, this is a very funny, holiday-appropriate goof on Big Chuck & Lil’ John. Hey, let the screenshot above speak for itself…

For this host segment, before heading into the real purpose behind it, a quick demonstration of the then-new Ghoul travel mug and Turn Blue Ghoul Brew is given. See, it can hold liquid! (And if it don’t make you burp, “You got a bad one!”)

Up until recently, the travel mug was still available new from The Ghoul’s official website, though a quick perusal of the online store reveals that it’s (apparently) no longer in stock. Turn Blue Ghoul Brew, on the other hand, hasn’t been around since, I guess, the early-2000s? Mid-2000s? I sure miss it though. It was blue root beer that turned your tongue the appropriate color upon imbibing. (There was a green, lemon-lime variant called “Froggy Squeezin’s” as well.)

I only tried the Froggy variety once (the nearby DeVitis Italian Foods carried Ghoul drinks), and it was good, but I loved the Ghoul Brew. Very tasty – and it really turned your tongue blue! I’ve still got an unopened bottle (maybe two) floating around here somewhere.

Immediately following that, it’s time for “Frankenstein Online,” later deemed “Frank-On-Line.” I remember the character, but I had totally forgotten about the early iteration of him. Lemme explain…

The gag was that the Frankenstein monster was real, and his body had been located, reanimated, and kept at the “Brownberry Institute” in Maryland. The torso remained there, but the head was on loan to The Ghoul. Contrary to popular opinion, Frank didn’t get a bad brain, he was just “nurtured badly.” (The Ghoul muses that if political correctness had been around back then, it could have been a whole different scenario.) Turns out, Frank’s very intelligent! And to prove that, viewers were invited to email him from the Ghoul’s website and ask for his advice!

The version of the bit I remembered was Sick Eddie, in green face paint, bolts, the whole deal, his head sticking up out of a table, dispensing advice is a mock-Frankenstein voice that to this day I find gaspingly funny. What I had forgotten, however, is that the character started out as a fake plastic head, and The Ghoul ‘voiced’ him off-screen. As The Ghoul’s intro makes clear, this was a very new addition to the show; it’s funny, but I’m glad they fleshed (Get it? FLESHED! HAW HAW H…aw never mind) the concept out a bit more.

For this installment in the soon-to-be long running segment, a viewer asks what he’s gotta do before asking a girl out on a date. Frank’s response? A series of incomprehensible grunts and yells! It’s not a segment that would have worked for very long doing the same thing every time, but here, it’s very funny.

There was at least one more of these gag segments (that I can remember), and I think what I like most about them was that they were always played ‘straight,’ as if this were a serious interview.

“Teen Idol” David Crosby (it’s not really him) stops by The Ghoul’s set to catch up on matters. This time around, The Ghoul asks him about his being a, uh, “donor” to Melissa Etheridge. Crosby responds with something along the lines of “Well, I have an album called 4 Way Street, so I decided to go another way!” Ha!

His “kid” is then presented; she looks just like him! In fact, she got everything from him – everything but his liver, that is!

The Ghoul had a long-running, good natured “feud” with legendary local anchorwoman Denise Dufala. It was obviously all in jest, but hardly a week went by where a shot (sometimes literally) at her then-recent CD (I’ve got a copy!) wasn’t taken.

This bit was filmed during the holidays (hence the Santa Ghoul sleeves), and repeated endlessly, which was and is fine with me, because I love it. Simply put, The Ghoul was inside the WOIO offices (?), and as a final prank before leaving, he placed his fake beard and mustache on Dufala’s official picture. The screen then froze on the image, while Carl Carlson’s “She’s a Bad Mama Jama” played longer than necessary. Good stuff!

A short, random segment (I guess a good many of Ghoul segments could be considered random!) in which Froggy shows up without being implored to “plunk his magic twanger.” This clearly displeases The Ghoul, who then tosses some lady fingers at the amphibian, causing him to be duly carted off by some “paramedics.”

When Froggy explains that it’s been awhile since he’s been by (hence the showing up unprovoked), The Ghoul’s almost nonchalant response of “I don’t care!” cracks me up.

For me, one of the biggest highlights in any episode was “The Ghoul’s Vault of Golden Garbage,” in which a vintage Ghoul skit would be presented. The chance to see material from the 1970s or 1980s, waaaaaaay before my time, it was fantastic.

That’s not quite what this installment was, though. It was an older bit presented, but not a vintage one. Rather, it’s a clip from 1999, and was actually the intro to one of my very favorite episodes (Attack of the Mushroom People). It’s definitely fun, and funny, and a good example of those non sequitur, apropos of nothing intros I mentioned earlier, but still, it wasn’t some new-to-me 1970s sketch, and that was (is) a little disappointing.

One of the crew must have found a busted “self-service” greeting card maker on the curb or something, gutted it, and brought it to the studio for a skit. Here, The Ghoul throws his money in the machine (“$3,95?!”), but when he attempts to make his own card, all he gets is a note stating “Wait a Second.” He soon discovers Froggy is in the back of the machine, which then causes Ghoul to rock the machine back and forth, throw it to the ground, and then tie a chain around it and drag it, via truck, around the parking lot until it falls to pieces!

Random? For sure. But, you know, I really do love it. I guess I can overlook it being of a then-recent vintage…

Years before he began appearing on The Son of Ghoul Show, this was how I was introduced to Jung, by his appearances on The Ghoul Show.

I learned some great stuff from JB on those shows, including some facts I’ve managed to retain in my memory banks all these years. (At Monsterfestmania, JB confirmed my recollection that if I were to drop a tarantula, it’s abdomen would straight-up ‘splode!)

For his appearance here, JB brought some shrimp (one of which The Ghoul accidentally dropped – it was fine), one of those cool fighting fish PetsMart is always shilling (I taunted one once; it slammed a fist through the glass jar at me*), and some tadpoles, which naturally prompted a return visit by Froggy; The Ghoul proceeded to swing him around, which resulted in his arm accidentally ripping off! (Froggy’s arm I mean, not The Ghoul’s.)

And that was pretty much it for the episode. (There was an obligatory model car blown up; I didn’t bother grabbing screenshots of that one. Besides, we all know what the best Ghoul blow-up ever** was!)

Before bouncing on out, The Ghoul presents a gift given to him by the crew: a talking Robbie the Robot doll! And then, after a final mention of it being his big birthday weekend (he won’t be able to make the Saturday WNCX 98.5 FM radio show he co-hosted with Mr. Classic at the time because of it), that was it, the last Ghoul Power for a week. It was always bittersweet seeing him bounce out of the studio at the end of each show, because it was over. Until next week, anyway.

I had a LOT of fun revisiting this episode. As I said before, this was basically all new stuff to me; I hadn’t seen this since it initially aired, so not only was it full of constant surprises, but it was just an all-around funny, entertaining show, to boot. Plus, it definitely gave me much more to work with than Invisible Ghost did.

Commercials! Commercials? Yes, commercials! 2000 is still just a bit too new for there to be a whole lot of vested interest in them for me. I mean, they’re a huge nostalgia boost personally when seeing them in action, but as far as writing about them goes, well, I’m not so sure.

Nevertheless, here’s a few (but just a few) I can kinda sorta babble about…

WBNX TV-55 The Lost World Promo

WBNX excelled in hour-long, syndicated shows. It was like a constant stream of lazy Saturday afternoon fare, but almost all the time (‘cept prime time, that is; that was the WB’s turf). The Lost World was one such series, and despite loving the 1925 silent film, I don’t think I ever took more than a cursory glance at the syndicated series. Good? Bad? The hell if I know. I assume it was about people stuck in a dinosaur-inhabited territory. (Gee, what a guess!)

In all seriousness, nowadays, I probably would give this one more of a shot – maybe.

WBNX TV-55 Total Recall 2070 Promo

Take everything I said about The Lost World above, ignore the dinosaur reference, and think of Arnold Schwarzenegger but not really. Do that…and you probably still wouldn’t have a clue about Total Recall 2070. I probably watched less of this show than I did The Lost World – and that’s saying something!

You know, I referenced the “Sunday era” of The Ghoul earlier. Some of these shows (Total Recall 2070andThe Lost World) were run after The Ghoul at certain points during that period. In fact, because I let my tapes keep recording loooong after The Ghoul was supposed to be over, I’ve captured examples of both, and probably more. I suppose if I were feeling adventurous enough, I could dig the tapes out and give ’em a try, but, meh.

Ody’s Tailors & Clothiers Ad

ODY’S! Now this one, I just love it.

Ody’s Tailors was located very, very close to me at the time. Indeed, it was thanks to his commercials during The Ghoul that when it came time for my 8th grade graduation, I insisted, insisted that I get my suit from Ody. And I did, too.

This ad is ostensibly for Ody’s retirement sale, 25% off everything in the store, etc. But truthfully, these “retirement” ads ran for quite awhile; I’m pretty sure I recently saw one on an old tape of mine from 2002 or 2003. That was actually a good thing, since I didn’t graduate until the Spring of 2001 – I’m glad Ody was still around. He was ridiculously friendly. I’m glad we could throw some bidness his way, even if it was just that one time.

The WB Zoe…Promo

I think I can count on one hand the number of WB shows I regularly watched. I’m not sure there were any, to be honest with you. Well, maybe one or two, tops.

And yet, thanks to promos aired during The Ghoul, I can certainly remember a good number of them. Zoe… is a good example of that. This promo is for the second season premiere of what was originally titled Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane. Obviously, they shortened the name to, officially, Zoe… (It’s pronounced, literally, Zoe Dot Dot Dot in the promo). I never watched either iteration, though for whatever reason, the original title made the show strike me as a ‘unique’ sitcom.

Lex Luthor from Smallville was in it, as was Selma Blair. That’s her in the left screenshot above, and it’s only now that I truly realize she was cute as a button.

WBNX TV-55 Unhappily Ever After Promo

I realize this promo is from after the show ended and was thus in syndicated reruns by that point. Even so, it still counts as a WB series, and one that, even though I didn’t watch it very often, I actually kinda liked whenever I did happen to tune in. I don’t know if it holds up for me; it tends to be compared or related in some way or something to Married…With Children, which I know hasn’t held up for me. Nevertheless, I had more experience with Unhappily than I did poor Zoe… above.

The actual episode this promo is for? Something about each family member having fantasies or living out their dreams or something like that. Look, I’m at over 5000 words for this article now, I’m tired.

What a huge, huge shot of nostalgia this recording is! It’s like a nearly-perfect summation of just what I loved staying up late Friday nights to watch The Ghoul. Almost everything about it clicks, from the skits to the movie to even the commercials (yeah, I kinda gave those short-shrift here, I know; they’re fun in action, but there weren’t all that many writable ones – ‘cept Ody, anyway).

The Ghoul wouldn’t remain like this a whole lot longer; that coming fall, he’d be moved to Sunday nights, his movie selections ruined, his skits, host segments and movie drop-ins scaled waaaaay back. The entire show that had been building up since the Summer of 1998 would more or less be totally destroyed in one fell swoop. ‘Course, I didn’t know any of that was ahead. I’d suspect neither The Ghoul nor his crew knew, either.

I can’t really say this Devil Bat episode is my favorite, though I do think I’d put it in my top 10, if I were ever bored enough to make a list such as that (and rest assured, I taped so many Ghoul shows over the years, I could if I wanted). Even though I hadn’t watched it since the initial airing over 16 years ago, boy, I enjoyed nearly every second of it. Consistently entertaining, and a hugely nostalgic presentation; I wish every old recording of mine met those criteria!

This past weekend, July 29 & 30, 2016, marked the first Monsterfestmania convention, with hopefully many more to come. Held at Quaker Square in downtown Akron, this was practically a hop, skip and jump away from me. I mean, if I was feeling particularly adventurous, I could have walked there, had the mood struck me. I didn’t go that far, but I did make it to the show for both days.

“Oh boy, a big ol’ convention recap post! I love these!”

I naively believe everyone is saying those exact words right at this very moment. And indeed, there’s a precedence for these here at the blog; we’ve visited the annual Ghoulardifest convention not once, not twice, but three times at this point, and yes, there’s plans for a fourth one come October.

This post, however, is not just another Ghoulardifest recap under a different name. Oh sure, there are the pictures with celebrities, and I got some cool loot I’ll show off with so much bravado, but this time around, it was all accompanied by a level of nervousness on my part that, quite frankly, is unprecedented. I don’t really get nervous in anticipation of meeting big-time famous people and whatnot anymore, but I sure did this time.

Why’s that? Because this time, I was actually a part of the show.

Yep, I was a panel presenter! That’s me to the far-left above, doing my thing in my best Sonny Crockett jacket and stubble. Hey, if I’m gonna be in front of people, I’m gonna look like I just rolled off the set of Miami Vice, by golly!

But why get nervous? I don’t really have a problem with being in front of large groups of people; on the contrary, I relish it. No, any anxiety on my part was due solely to the fact that, frankly, I had just never done anything like this before. This was an entirely new experience for me. And furthermore, at any other convention, I skip the panels; I prefer to meet celebrities face-to-face, and besides, I’m usually too busy blowing my frighteningly limited funds on things I probably don’t need. So, I had descriptive accounts of what would take place, but I had no first-hand knowledge of how all this would play out.

Also, even though I don’t mind being in front of a crowd, I was concerned about what I would say. I’ve seen enough thousand-year-old broadcasts to know that stumbling over words, or worse yet, falling into silence, can be the kiss of death for this sort of thing. There’s no better way to look like a total amateur and lose a crowd right quick. Now, I did have notes with me as a guide, and in most cases I had enough knowledge about the subjects to where I didn’t really need them. Still, with this being my first foray into the world of panels, I neither wanted to appear too unprepared, nor appear too cocky.

Everyone I talked to told me I was just fine, and I was generally pretty happy with my performance (which is actually a telling statement, since I tend to be my own worst critic), though my sense of humor didn’t really fly with the audience (more on that in due time). If I am fortunate enough to be asked back next year, now that I’ve got a little experience under my belt, I feel I’d do even better.

You know what’s really cool about being asked to introduce the panels? It’s basically all because of this blog. Okay, I’ve known two of the guys behind the show itself for years (we’ll see them in a bit) via Time Traveler Records, but it took more than just acquaintances to be invited to do something like this. My high-level of interest in Northeast Ohio horror movie hosts, and my ability to babble about them online, has paid off yet again!

Hey, dig this: I made the official website! Cool winnins! Stuff like this makes me feel like a big man. I sure hoped I lived up to the promises made in that first paragraph! I did a short intro and outro to each panel, but they really sort of ran themselves; these were all pros I was dealing with here, so there wasn’t much actual ‘moderation’ needed on my part, aside from making sure one panel ended in time for the following panel to begin.

We’ll get to the panel aspects in just a moment, but for now, first things first: Monsterfestmania as a whole.

You know, I don’t think I’ve been to Quaker Square since, man, probably 2000. That was the last time the Frightvision convention was held there. I had my memories of the place, but I had forgotten just how nice it is inside. Lots and lots of room for vendors, and the two “side rooms” were big enough to fit plenty of people, but not so large that people in the back would be lost. (One room was used for panels, the other for screening films.)

The above picture (as well as the next two) was taken early on the first day, and right from the start, it was obvious a LOT of people had gotten tables. There was stuff for sale as far as the eye could see! And of course, there were the celebrity tables, too; look close and you’ll see Felix “Cousin Itt” Silla (we’ll see more of him in a bit) was captured in the shot above! This was by accident, but it was a happy accident; Felix is a cool guy!

Another shot of the main convention area, obviously. This was to the far-left when viewed coming from the main entrance. To the left of the picture you can see Dale Kay, and towards the right, internet horror hosts Tarr & Fether. Jungle Bob, with his back unknowingly to the camera, is in the middle. We’ll see more of all of them in a bit, too.

Odd side note: approximately three people are going to get this reference, but the carpeting absolutely reminds me of the floor in the last section of Double Dragon II. Look here if you don’t believe me. I kept looking around for a Big Boss Willy to pummel, but he never showed.

My mind works in really, really weird ways, doesn’t it?

A shot more towards the back, in the middle of the main space. CW was the sponsor for the show, and not only were they running a swanky commercial for it in the weeks leading up to the big day(s), but they also had displays for CW programming (Supergirl, above) and a cool spinny wheel that yielded sweet, sweet free prizes. My brother, who was also helping out both days, won a copy of Goosebumps on DVD/Blu-ray the first day and a pack of King of Queens playing cards the second. Not realizing I was eligible, I only spun on the second day. I got a see-through tote bag.

So anyway, my panel presentations. That’s where I spent about 75% of my time at Monsterfestmania. And you know, the fact that I got to hobnob with some genuinely big names in the field in such a ‘close’ way, it still blows my mind. Sure, I already knew Mike & Jan Olszewski, Jungle Bob and Keven “Son of Ghoul” Scarpino, but I had never interacted with them like this. It’s a great honor to be up in front of a crowd with people like that. Just like the official website announcement, it makes me feel like a big man.

Above is the first panel of the first day, and my first panel of any kind in any sort of capacity. And it featured big-time author and horror host-expert Michael Monahan! What a way to start!

When it comes to horror hosts, Monahan is basically the final word on the subject; he’s a legitimate font of information on the genre. Ever read the American Scary book, or see the American Scary documentary? Then you’re familiar with Michael Monahan’s expertise. Indeed, I *love* my copy of American Scary; if it’s not the end-all, be-all of horror host books, it’s certainly in the running. Don’t have it? Pick up a copy today!

(Michael Monahan is a prolific author, and he’s certainly written more than just that – check his work out on Amazon!)

Monahan’s panel consisted of his relating the early years of horror hosting, how it came to be a ‘thing,’ and how it played out over the decades. It was a fascinating talk, and about mid-way through the presentation, he brought out David Ivey, who did artwork and cartoons for The Ghoul Show back in the day – how cool is that?! Ivey related stories of working on the show, which were also fascinating.

(Above, Michael Monahan is the one seated on the right, David Ivey standing on the left.)

Next up: Jungle Bob’s animal show! Jung! My buddy!

It’s funny; I basically grew up watching Jungle Bob present animals on The Ghoul Show, and then later The Son of Ghoul Show, but I had never actually seen him “in action,” putting on one of his animal presentations. Man, he has it down. I mean, he’s been doing this sort of thing for nearly 30 years, so of course he does. It goes without saying that his animal shows are immensely entertaining; really, they’re a lot of fun. If you’ve been looking for a special guest for that birthday party, JB is a great choice! (Check out his official website here. Buy his terrific book while you’re at it.)

There were a lot of kids in attendance for JB’s show, and boy, is he great with them. I guess you don’t do this sort of thing for 30 years without being good with kids though, huh? He kept them engaged, he was funny, he was informative, he told stories. In short, vintage classic Jungle Bob.

These panels only had about 50 minute allotments, give or take, so JB didn’t have time for a ton of animals, but he did bring a couple cockroaches (including one that hissed), a ball python, and my favorite, a young alligator snapping turtle that kept his mouth menacingly open most of the time. Good stuff!

My last panel of the first day was “Horror Hosts Reborn,” with Dale Kay of Eerie House (formerly of Kreepy Kastle) heading up a group of online hosts, discussing what opportunities, detriments, and so on that the internet brings the genre. That’s Kay to the far right. Next to him are hosts Tarr & Fether, Fritz the Nite Owl and his producer, and at the end, Mike Mace of The Weirdness Really Bad Movie. The other host of Weirdness, Dave Binkley, was actually at the other end of the table, next to Kay. You saw him earlier in that other shot I used from this panel, and you’ll see him again in a bit, but it looks like I goofed and accidentally cut him out of this shot. I’m sorry Dave!

It was a pretty neat discussion, and since this was the last panel of the day, I let it run well beyond the allotted 50 minutes – it had gained so much momentum by that point that cutting in and ending it would have been incredibly awkward, and besides, I was into it. Internet hosts don’t always get the props they deserve, but there’s a lot that goes into those shows; it was nice to hear all about them from the people that regularly make them happen.

Mike Olszewski kicked off the day with a talk on the early days of local television, which, if you’re familiar with him, you know he’s pretty much the authority on the subject, and the stories he tells are nothing short of enthralling. That’s not an exaggeration on my part, either; if you have an interest in this sort of thing, you owe it to yourself to pick up something, anything, written by him.

Mike spent nearly as much time in the panel room as I did Saturday. There were four panels that day, and he was there for four of them. For this first one, his wife Jan (who is also just the greatest) did a funny bit where she stood in the crowd and said she’d only interject to correct Mike!

Speaking of humor, yeah, my jokes didn’t really fly with the crowd. Not that I went up there and did stand-up or anything, but I did want to keep things light, you know? For this panel, I mentioned the two books Mike & Jan wrote (Cleveland TV Tales, volumes 1 & 2), and quickly noted that a piece of my Superhost interview was included in the second book. According to me, I said this “puts it up there with Tom Sawyer as the greatest literary work of mankind” or something along those lines. It got like one laugh – from my brother.

The day prior, as I was introducing Michael Monahan, I briefly stated who I was and why I was up there, and when talking about the blog here, I said something like “Google me, check me out, and you’ll come away feeling better about your life!” Yeah, zero reaction. Okay, the crowd ain’t gonna get my humor, gotcha!

(I wasn’t really embarrassed by my failure to elicit Johnny Carson-style laughs during my intros; if anything, *I* found it really, really funny! Though, my planned rip-off of Carnac for next year, should I be invited back, is now effectively nixed.)

Next up: The Ghoulardi Tribute panel, with Michael Monahan, Son of Ghoul, Mike Olszewski, and comics legend Tony Isabella. I wish I actually had a working knowledge of comic books so that I could have had a conversation with Tony, but aside from liking Batman and Superman, I, uh, don’t.

It was a fun panel, talking about the influence Ghoulardi had on anything and everything ever. Much of it was familiar to me already, but hearing it from the authorities on the subject, that’s awesome.

And so, that brought me to the panel I was perhaps most nervous about: The Addams Family presentation, hosted by Ivonna Cadaver (of Youtoo America’s Macabre Theater). You see, I had more than a passing knowledge on everything up to this point, and while I was familiar with Ivonna and her show, my knowledge on The Addams Family is relatively lacking. No knock on the show whatsoever, but I was always, uh, sorta in the Grampacamp.

I needn’t have worried; as I had discovered already, these panels basically run themselves. Those are pros up there onstage, after all. And boy, this one was a LOT of fun, not only because of who was involved, but because this time around, I was really learning things I hadn’t known prior.

And listen to this power line-up: Ivonna Cadaver herself, leading a discussion with Lisa Loring (“Wednesday Addams”) and Felix Silla (“Cousin Itt”). It was funny, entertaining, informative, just a fantastic presentation all around. This one ran a bit shorter than the others, but you know what? The pacing turned out to be perfect. They covered a lot of ground and even got to audience questions, and it never felt rushed or forced or anything other than natural reminiscing. It was great.

One thing about Monsterfestmania that was heavily promoted in the lead-up to the actual show was Son of Ghoul’s 30th anniversary. Certainly you’ll recall my contribution to the celebration back in June. Well, much of Monsterfestmania was focused on that. Indeed, the fourth panel on the last day (and the last real panel; there was a costume contest held in the room afterwards, but that, needless to say, wasn’t quite the same thing) was a “grand finale” of sorts, focusing entirely on Son of Ghoul’s 30 continuous years as a horror host.

This panel was, man, it was just perfect. It was a wonderful summation of just why SOG is so beloved by Northeast Ohioans. And, if it turns out to be the last real “30th anniversary bang,” what a terrific capper it was. Headed up by Michael Monahan (who told a few jokes as he kicked the panel off following my intro – of course everyone laughed at him) and Mike Olszewski, with the man himself as guest of honor, it was just a wonderful 1+ hour presentation.

For the most part, it didn’t stray too far from the format of the other panels: some video clips, a discussion on SOG’s achievement, some reminiscing, even some great stories about Fidge. It was all very entertaining and a worthy tribute to SOG.

But, it was the ‘climax’ of the panel that just put it over the top, taking it from great and putting it solidly into unforgettable territory. Michael Savene, one of the guys behind Monsterfestmania as a whole, joined the panel and, along with Monahan and Olszewski, presented SOG with some truly remarkable gifts: 1) A letter of congratulations, on White House stationary, signed by the President. 2) A letter from Senator Sherrod Brown. 3) A proclamation from Akron Mayor Daniel Horrigan proclaiming June 30, 2016 “Son of Ghoul Day.” 4) A classy lifetime achievement plaque from Monsterfestmania. How great is that?!

I think SOG was genuinely touched to be honored in such a way. How could someone not be? It was just a fantastic, momentous, once-in-a-lifetime event, perfectly commemorating a 30-years-and-counting run that, in all likelihood, will never be equaled – or topped. And to be a part of this tribute in some way, it’s something I am extremely proud of. Even if I had done nothing else this past weekend, this moment alone was worth any anxiety on my part.

(The panel culminated in a special SOG 30th cake, which I stupidly didn’t think to get a picture of.)

So, that was basically how my weekend was spent, hobnobbing with people that actually know what they’re talking about. Truth be told, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend on the floor, for the most part. I made some rounds before the doors opened on Friday, and for a bit after my last panel that night, and a few points in-between. But, I didn’t really get to go around, meet people, and take pictures with the ‘lebrities until after my last panel on Saturday. Who’d I meet? Read on!

This picture was taken Friday night, a decision that proved to be extremely fortunate. I’ll explain further when I get to the “my stuff” section of this post.

I met Fritz the Nite Owl! When the guests were being announced for Monsterfestmania, this was one of the major draws for me. Longtime readers (or at least longer time readers) will recall I’ve talked about Fritz a bit before here (more on that momentarily). Even though I didn’t grow up watching him (he hails from the Columbus, Ohio market, and I, uh, don’t), I’ve loved everything I’ve seen regarding him. He’s a legitimate horror hosting legend, so if nothing else, I was going to meet him!

And boy oh boy, he was just great! Extremely giving with his time, free with signing autographs, and he told absolutely wonderful stories. Not just quick brush-off stories, either; nope, these were detailed, entertaining stories. And he was the nicest guy during all of it.

As if I couldn’t be any more impressed by him, something he did that I thought was ridiculously cool was his showing up to panels, and then just sitting in the audience, taking it all in. Even though he would eventually be pointed out (and given a round of applause – deservedly so), he wasn’t there for that; he was there to see the presentations. Fritz was just the coolest.

Also taken Friday night, here I am with the Weirdness Really Bad Movie guys: Dave Binkley on the left, Mike Mace on the right. Really great, super friendly guys. Their talks during the “Horror Hosts Reborn” panel were beyond enlightening.

My doing the panel presentations wasn’t a new development; Michael Savene came to me about a year and a half ago, asking me if I’d like to be involved with the show. Of course I instantly said yes. I had plenty of time to prepare, at least mentally, for that. However, something I was asked to do the first day came out of the blue: make announcements for the charity auctions, panels and movie showings over the loudspeaker. I had no problem with that, but just like the panel presentations, this was all entirely new to me. Mike Mace gave me some pointers, showed me how to use the most ear-grabbing techniques, excellent things to know. Mike’s a good egg.

Jungle Bob was only there the first day, and in a stunningly goofballed oversight on my part, I neglected to get a picture with him. I mean, sure, I’ve got pictures of myself hangin’ with JB before, but this was Monsterfestmania #1! And I messed up!

So, to make up for that blunder, here’s a zoomed, cropped, overly- blurry shot of the man himself holding a really angry snapping turtle. It was a young alligator snapper, and boy did it act like it!

If you ever have the chance to talk, I mean really talk with JB, he has some absolutely fantastic stories of his years in the business. I won’t divulge his Rock Hall tale here, that’s his turf, but it’s just great. JB is, without a doubt, “the dude.”

The Yess Man!

Jesse Vance was/is not only one of the masterminds behind Monsterfestmania, but also a very good friend of mine. Popularly known as “The Yess Man” (he’s got the juice), Jesse is largely to thank for this this post and this post, as well as tons of great material that hasn’t even been hinted at on this blog yet. Seriously, he’s always helping me out with the cool winnins, and even if he didn’t, he’d still be one of the best friends I’ve got. One of the funniest, coolest guys I’ve ever known. He was also a huge help to me in the time leading up to the show, and even during the show itself. Thanks, Yess Man!

Look who I did done runned into! My buddy Steve from high school!

Let me be frank, there’s really only a handful of people I’d care to run into from high school, and make no mistake, Steve is one of them. He was one of the coolest guys then, and he’s one of the coolest guys now. Even back then, we could sit and discuss movies, especially horror & sci-fi movies, for great lengths of time. Also, I refuse to believe anyone knows more about Batman than Steve. Dude’s even got a legit Adam West Batman costume!

I won’t divulge too much, but chances are we’ll be seeing Steve again on the blog; we’ve already come up with some great ideas for post-collaboratin’!

I wonder if it was deflating for Son of Ghoul to get a letter from the president and a plaque and a big ol’ cake, and then almost immediately afterwards have to take pictures like this with me?

I had a lot of fun and some great conversations with SOG both days. Because of my white jacket, and because he knows me, he liked to shout “Waiter! Water!” whenever I walked by. I got a kick out of it, and eventually I decided it would be pretty funny if I actually brought him some water. I had this big long comedy routine worked out in my head for when I did, too. When I gave him the cup though, he seemed a little confused and admitted he “was just joking!” That, of course, kind of put an end to any ostensibly-hilarious bit I had planned before it even got started.

Hanging with the guys from the last panel of the first day on, uh, the last day. On the left: internet hosts Tarr & Fether. On the right: Dale Kay. In the middle: my really cool official Monsterfestmania t-shirt. (They let us keep ’em, too!)

Had some great talks with Dale; when all was said and done, panel-wise, we chatted a bit outside on Saturday (finally had time to get some food!). I admit it took me a second to recognize him without the hat (I was pretty beat by that point, y’see). Dale mentioned the old Ghoul skit where a stuffed Gamera was sent zooming across the studio – anyone who loves that bit as much as I do is automatically my friend.

On the left, Michael Monahan. On the right, Dave Ivey. It was awesome meeting Dave; so much of his work was familiar to me, except I didn’t know it was his. A great artist and a great guy.

Had some terrific conversations with Michael Monahan. We both agreed Dr. Paul Bearer was one of the absolute greats, and we discussed our obtaining of various horror host material. I even showed him the clip of Renfield on my phone; it was a new one on him, so the mystery of the show continues – if it’s unfamiliar to Michael Monahan, it must be mega-obscure!

I met Ivonna Cadaver!

Ivonna Cadaver hosts Macabre Theater on Youtoo America every Saturday night at 10 PM. It’s tough for any host to make it on local TV, never mind national TV, and to be doing it since 2002? That’s beyond impressive. I told her myself how awesome an achievement it was to make it on national TV, too.

And boy, she was just absolutely the nicest. She even told me a couple of times how well I did presenting her panel. She even stopped in to watch the SOG 30th presentation from the audience, completely unannounced, just taking it all in. I think that’s such a cool thing for a fellow host to do. I’m extremely glad I had a chance to talk with her and get a photo.

I met Ivonna Cadaver!

Hangin’ with my Facebook pal, Dr. Dark aka Justin Thomas Ord! Great, great guy – very friendly and a lot of fun to talk to. He was there the first day, and I was looking for him – but being out of costume, I completely missed him! That was obviously rectified the second day, and I’m glad it was; I would have been bummed otherwise.

Also, is it just me or does his costume recall The Shroud? That alone makes him “the man!”

I had, had, to get a picture with, I’m convinced, two of the nicest people in the whole wide world: Mike & Jan Olszewski! Who’s that curly-headed guy? That’s my brother Luke! No, I don’t think we look alike, but tis true nevertheless. Also, that’s a lot of Monsterfestmania shirts in one picture.

Mike paid me a wildly high compliment early on the first day: he told me I was like a 60-year-old in the body of a 20-year-old, because of what I generally write about. Could’ve knocked me over with a feather!

The reason I found that especially complimentary? Doing what I do, and being as old (or young) as I am, I’ve naturally run into some people that, right off the bat, don’t take me seriously, or worse yet, don’t think I actually know what I’m talking about. I’m generally an easygoing guy, but that mindset can and does irritate me really, really fast, because it’s based on a preconceived notion without any evidence on their part to back it up. So, to hear such a compliment from someone that knows more about TV than, well, pretty much anyone, it’s both insanely flattering and a kind of validation.

Mike & Jan really are just wonderful. Y’all should go and buy bothvolumes of their Cleveland TV Tales, if you haven’t done so yet. I’m not just saying that because I’m so fond of the authors, either; these are genuine must-reads! Plus, if you think about it, the bits from my Superhost interview in Volume 2 really do elevate the book to Tom Sawyer-status, whether the audience recognizes it or not. [Insert winky emoticon here.]

And finally, things wouldn’t be complete without a picture of myself with fearless leader, Michael Savene! Michael is one of the main-brains behind not only Monsterfestmania but also Akron Comicon, and make no mistake, he and the other folks behind these shows know how to run a convention. They did a phenomenal job; the first-ever Monsterfestmania was a total blast. I can’t thank him enough for allowing me to be a part of all this!

Also, eagle-eyes will notice we were photobombed by The Yess Man!

Just for fun:

The Yess Man and I messing around with some zombie-thing. I’m not sure why, but I was pretty tired and probably fairly slap-happy by that point. Looks like we’re helping him get up off the ground or something.

More just for fun:

Son of Ghoul at his most Batman-ish. It looks like he just rolled in off the set of Batman Returns. I’m not sure why my mind heads towards Batman Returns and not, say, the ’89 Batman, but whatever. In his hand, SOG holds a plastic cup of punch. I capture all of the special little moments in life, don’t I?

Last just for fun:

A wildly blurry and off-center photo of me with Fritz the Nite Owl. I’m not sure why my brother snapped this, but to tell you the truth, I kinda like it. It’s avant garde or artsy or something like that.

I usually wrap these convention recap posts up with a look at my loot, my booty, my haul. That is, the cool stuff I picked up at the show. I actually didn’t buy much there, mainly because I didn’t have a whole lot of time. Well, that’s not quite true; I didn’t buy anything. That doesn’t mean I didn’t come home with some cool stuff though. Besides the everlastingly-awesome convention t-shirt, check these goods out…

Because I used my bean and got a picture with Fritz at the end of the first night, that meant I had time to get an 8×10 glossy of the occurrence printed out and subsequently signed the next day! A pic with Fritz and his autograph? It doesn’t get much cooler than that! Also, a post, the one I alluded to earlier, featured an image from his run on WBNS TV-10, spotlighting Taxi and his Double Chiller Nite Owl Theater program. I’ve got several Fritz promos, but this was the only one specifically horror-related. So, I figured why not get a glossy print-out of that sceencap, too. Fritz was gracious enough to sign it as well (and he told me quite a bit about some of his other station duties around that time period).

In the same arena, a couple of SOG screencaps from promos I’ve found, printed out as glossies and graciously signed by the man himself. The one on top is a clip from his 7th anniversary special promo (WOAC TV-67, 1993), and the one below is a shot from his 2015 promo announcing his timeslot change (as far as I know, this is the newest promo he has). We actually saw that one here before, when I was trying to spread the word of the change.

I like getting these sorts of things signed because, frankly, I’ve already got much of the ‘normal’ stuff; I like to have something unique added to my collection, something not everyone else has. Methinks these fit the bill.

Last but certainly not least: a Son of Ghoul commemorative 30th anniversary Monsterfestmania mug! Still new in the plastic! This was a complimentary gift, given to me when I got my t-shirt before the doors opened on the first day. (My brother got a mug and shirt to call his own as well.) I THIS LOVE MUG. It’s an exclusive thing, celebrating both SOG’s 30th and the convention I was proud to be a part of. It will probably stay new in the plastic, because if I were ever to try using it, I know I’d be freaking out over it, worried I’d break it or chip it or what have you.

I LOVE THIS MUG!

I do believe that about wraps this recap up. I had a fantastic two days at Monsterfestmania #1. Not only was it a learning experience, but it was a fun learning experience. I met some great people, got some awesome pictures, brought home some cool memorabilia, and helped get my silly little blog out there a bit more (some guy even asked me for my card; never thinking anyone would care enough to want a card, I instead wrote down the web address on a sad piece of notepad paper).

My sincerest thanks again to Michael Savene, Jesse Vance and everyone else that helped make this happen. It was and is a honor and pleasure to be a part of the show, and should you want me back for the next one, hey, I’m there!

Hey, remember when I used to occasionally look at old electronics here at the blog? No?! I don’t blame you; it’s been approximately 97 years since we last saw a post like this.

Mostly, it’s been because I just haven’t found any really worth writing about. That’s not to say I haven’t picked up some neat old VCRs and whatnot while out and about, there have been a few decent purchases, but nothing that would get me sufficiently fired up enough to babble about them for the duration of a post. Simply put, my thrift visits as of late have included the customary electronic searches, but they’ve almost all be fruitless affairs.

But then, this happened, and it made all the wasted efforts totally worth it. A recent visit to the Village Discount Outlet thrift on Waterloo Road found your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter, from a cool winnins-standpoint, more or less striking out yet again, until I finally decided to take a closer look at the DVD player that had been continuously staring at me from the electronics shelf. This proved to be one of the wiser decisions I’ve made, as the ensuing revelation of just what this was not only turned my electronics-fortunes around in one fell swoop, but also caused me to babble like a veritable maniac.

“Yo, what’s the big deal about a DVD player bro?” It’s not just a DVD player, fictitious example of a tool. Okay, maybe on the surface it is, but that’s not really the point. No no, this is a Toshiba SD-2006, and the historical aspects of it outweigh any of the things it actually, uh, does. Why’s that? Besides the stamping of April 1997 on the back, which is way early for a DVD player anyway, this site tells me that this was one of two models Toshiba released at the same time on March 19, 1997. Oh, and those also happened to be the first two DVD players ever released in the US.

THAT’S why this is cool winnins.

And it still powers up! When I realized just how special this machine was at the thrift store (due in part to a quick online search via my cellphone; thanks technology!), there was already a better-than-good chance it was coming home with me. But, I still had to go through the usual mental checkpoints before I could plop it down at the check-out counter, even if said mental checkpoints were mostly a formality this time around.

1) Was it in good condition? Definitely, exponentially so. Even had the remote with it!

2) Did it function? I plugged it in and did as much testing as I reasonably could, and the prognosis was positive. Just lookit that cute lil’ disc-tray in action up there!

3) Was the price right? At $15, which is about $10 more than *I* like to pay for any old electronic found at a thrift store, not really. But you know what? Screw it. You only go around once, and this was such a cool piece of 1990s technology, I just couldn’t resist. It didn’t hurt that I had been wanting an early DVD model for my collection, and frankly, it doesn’t get much earlier than this.

I actually made several sweeps over the electronics section before I decided to take a closer look at this SD-2006. Even though I had been on the lookout for an earlier model, many DVD players tend to have a same-y look to them, which causes me to (usually) pay substantially less attention to them. Seriously, go to your local thrift store and check out their DVD players selection, and just see if your eyes don’t glaze over after about 10 seconds of player-gazing. (That sounded weirder than I intended it to.)

I think that’s why I eventually made a real examination of this SD-2006; it just didn’t doesn’t look like the common, garden-variety DVD device we’ve become accustomed to over the years. There’s a sleek, streamlined, late-1990s sensibility to the casing; it actually reminds me of some VHS VCRs from around that period. I’m not sure it’s a look that could have lasted in the mainstream much longer than it did, but for the home entertainment centers of 1997, it’s perfect.

According to that previously-linked site, the two models Toshiba released that day were this SD-2006, and the SD-3006. From how I understand it (and a quick online image search bears this out), they were both identical except the SD-3006 had more outputs and whatnot along the back. There was apparently a $100 price-difference between the two because of this.

Which means that my SD-2006, with only A/V, AC-3 and S-Video outputs (and an audio selector), was the lower-end model of the two. Just look at it above if you don’t believe me. Please don’t take that to mean this was a cheap electronic, though; it still retailed for a whopping $599. No kidding, this was the end-all, be-all of home entertainment at the time. (Well, nearly so; $699 got you the model with more outputs, so I guess that was actually the end-all, be-all.)

Considering I can go to the grocery store and get a new DVD player for like $20 nowadays (albeit probably not a good DVD player), to look back at when this was the innovation in home video, and a pricey one at that, it’s astounding. DVD players are everywhere today, but, nearly two decades ago, this was the living end, man. Can you dig it?

Has it really been almost 20 years since DVD hit the US? I refuse to believe it’s been almost 20 years since DVD hit the US.

See, April 1997. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.

Before I busted out the cellphone and discovered the true historical aspects of this model, all I knew was that April 1997 was pretty early in the DVD-era. I had the vague notion in my head that DVD was around in the US in 1996, though obviously I was incorrect there. Nevertheless, when I investigated the fine print on the back and saw the date it was manufactured, my eyes popped figuratively (literally?) out of my head.

Prior to finding this, I really had been on the hunt for an earlier DVD player. There was no practical reason for this beyond a fondness for vintage (can 1997 now be considered “vintage?”) electronics. In the months preceding the find, I did buy a cool five-disc RCA player, dated 2000. It worked fine, and it looked classy, but it didn’t quite satisfy the hunger, and I was doing nothing with it, so I eventually donated it to Time Traveler Records.

My fascination with the relatively primordial era of DVD is due to a few factors. First of all, from how I understand it (and correct me if I’m wrong here), while the format was around prior (duh!), it didn’t really take off until Sony’s Playstation 2 was released in 2000. An affordable gaming system that’s also a DVD player? No wonder PS2 was one of the biggest selling things ever! Apparently this opened up the market and introduced the format to a whole new segment of consumers, which in turn helped make DVD the de facto video format, a position it tenuously maintains to this day. (Though I have no idea where Blu-ray or all this streaming crap falls into the equation right now.)

But more importantly, this model symbolizes the almost-mythical aura higher-end video formats such as this held for me at the time (and it’s important to emphasize that this was strictly my personal viewpoint). Keep in mind, I was only about 11 years old when this player was manufactured. I was already an avid tape collector, which made sense, because VHS was basically it. Oh sure, there were Laserdiscs, but in my eyes they were just some vague high-end format Leonard Maltin mentioned in his guides and that filled the first few rows of Best Buy’s movie section; no one I knew had a Laserdisc player. And that early in the game, no one I knew had DVD, either. Certainly not that I can recall, anyway. In fact, until it really took off, DVD was just something that was “in the background” to me; something that was advertised, something for sale at the store, but not something anyone I knew actually had.

Honestly, it was the same feeling with Turbografx-16 and (at a certain point) Sega Genesis earlier in the decade, too. Being a Nintendo kid, I’d see the magazine advertisements for those systems and their games, but they were simply some mystical thing for sale somewhere; they really weren’t on my radar otherwise. Eventually, Sega was on my radar when it took off big time, and it became the first console I ever bought new with my own money, but the TG-16 remained an advertised-but-not-seen curio. (I mean no knock on the Turbo though; it took awhile to get one, but I wound up loving that console, too.)

Am I making any sense here?

My admittedly-garbled point is, or was, that VHS was so predominant and the format everyone had, that everything else was kind of ‘obscure’ in my eyes, for lack of a better descriptive term. It wasn’t until the early-2000s when DVD began dethroning VHS that I really started paying attention to it. So, to find a DVD player manufactured when VHS was still king and would continue to be for a few more years, I find that wildly interesting.

Unlike the vast majority of the old electronics that enter my collection, the SD-2006 came with the original remote! And bonus, it wasn’t so grimy that I’d have to wear a hazmat suit just to look at it! Nice surprisins! For the life of me I can’t figure out where the batteries go, but there’s apparently some still in there, because the player responds whenever I bash on the remote with my meaty paws.

Also, dig the cool “Toshiba” branding stamped on the top of the casing. Sign o’ quality, man.

So, the thing was in good cosmetic shape, and powered up, but that doesn’t mean much if it won’t actually play a disc. Because this was more of a collector piece than anything for me, if it didn’t play correctly, I wasn’t gonna be too irked. I’ve got approximately 6000 devices that will run a DVD if need be; I’m pretty sure my toaster will even load one if I ask it nicely enough.

Still, it’s obviously preferable that my SD-2006, you know, works. Someday, when I have far too much money (and even more time) on my hands, I imagine I’ll put together a “1990s entertainment center,” which will spotlight electronics from the decade. An appropriate TV, VCR, Laserdisc player, and even a Betamax (I do have the last US model from 1993, baby!), and perhaps even a video game console or two will round out the set-up. This, of course, would serve no other purpose than for me to be as arbitrarily pretentious as humanly possible, but it’s a thought that amuses me nonetheless. I envision similar set-ups for 1970s and 1980s electronics, as well.

Damn I’m pathetic.

Anyway, when I brought the player down here to take pictures and do further testing, mere feet away loomed my spare copy of the M*A*S*H Season Six DVD set. I have DVDs more from the “era” this model was manufactured, but I wanted to test with something that might pose more of a ‘challenge’ to the player; conventional DVD wisdom is (or was) that some older models had problems with newer discs, specifically dual-layered discs, which this M*A*S*H set is. Season Six was released on DVD initially in 2004, and this was the repackaged version from 2008. So, all kinds of new (newer) DVD to put the player through the paces. Plus, M*A*S*H was within arm’s reach.

Also, doesn’t Season Six, Disc One look cute residing in the tray up there? Maybe I wanted to write this article merely as an excuse to use that pic, you don’t know.

Well, it certainly appears to be reading something!

(He said as if he didn’t already know the results and wasn’t merely posting this picture to keep the flow of the article going. Still, you get a nice look at the actual display of the model. Exciting, isn’t it?)

There are no real graphics to be seen upon firing up the player and loading a disc; you get a blue screen and declarations of no disc, loading, and so on and so on. What, you need fireworks? The promise of crystal clear digital video isn’t enough for you? DVD came to improve your viewing experience, and you return the favor by spitting in its face. Real nice, you analog barbarian.

I’m not sure if it’s because this thing has been well-used, or simply because it’s such an early example of the format, but it seemed to me that it took a bit longer to load the the disc than what would be acceptable nowadays. Or maybe my perception is just skewed and the load time was perfectly reasonable. I tested this through the video capture card on my PC, and there is a slight delay between what I input and what appears on-screen, so I don’t know.

Not that I really care; it’s not like I’m pressed for time when sitting down to watch a DVD anyway, and I’d totally expect an older device to take a bit longer loading a disc. I’m not criticizing here, merely observing.

It lives! And it looks really, really nice. I’m not sure what I was expecting, honestly, but the picture was nice, stable and sharp. ‘Course, this isn’t a VHS VCR, so perhaps a dull surprise there. Still, unless you were expecting Blu-ray quality, for a device that’s nearly 20 years old, picture-wise it’s still quite passable.

I didn’t play a ton of M*A*S*H, but for what I did see, there wasn’t any skipping or freezing. That’s not to say there wouldn’t have been some later on, had I kept going, or that a cheaper disc would play flawlessly too. But as of now, no problems to report.

Above, you can see not only the picture-quality, but also the incredible subtitles-feature in action, as well as the info display. Update your diaries accordingly. I’m furious multi-angle isn’t present.

I doubt the SD-2006 is a particularly rare or sought-after model. I’d guess when newer, more feature-packed players began coming out shortly thereafter, the prices for these steadily decreased. Today, it’s probably not worth much more than the $15 Village Discount had on it, if even that.

Still, it’s such a cool historical piece, and the date of April 1997 on the back only enhances that. This represents the dawn of the digital video age in the US as we now know it. Is it wildly outdated now? Well, sure; that’s just the nature of technology. That doesn’t bother me in the least, though. I mean, this entire blog is about obsolete TV and TV-related things, after all. Now that I think about it, this may be the most advanced electronic we’ve seen here.

It takes a lot to get me excited over an old DVD player; they’re a dime-a-dozen, and I come across so many of them while out thrifting that I barely notice them anymore. Needless to say, I’m glad I noticed this one.

Plus, would there be a more-1997 way to watch Batman & Robin? That just seems like the kind of flick I should have playing on this thing continuously in the background. Maybe when I put together that 1990s entertainment center…

Look what I got! A 12-movie, 3-disc budget DVD set of what are, ostensibly, the best of the worst movies ever made! Cool winnins! I was stoked to get this! And it was cheap, too! In general, this set tends to run, from what I’ve heard, between $5 to $10, a price that is completely acceptable even for someone that’s as perpetually broke as I am (mine was $5). And if awful, awful movies are what you’re after, the first disc alone warrants that price (we’ll get to all that in a bit).

Even though this came out in 2013, I just found out about it recently. Guess I’ve been off my budget DVD game. It’s put out by Mill Creek, who have, over the last several years, proven themselves to be purveyors of fine, fine DVD releases. I’m not just saying that because I dream of them sending me a bunch of free crap, either; any company that releases the complete series of Hunter is automatically my friend.

The fine folks at Mill Creek are no strangers to releases such as this, either; there are several budget DVD sets of cheapie horror/sci-fi flicks put out by them. They follow a similar format, except this set is the only one to come right out and tell you that the movies contained within are gonna blow. Since the ‘genre’ of bad movies is particularly popular right now, it’s a pretty smart move on Mill Creek’s part. Hey, got me to buy it, and isn’t that the really important factor here?

(Click on the pic for a, how do you say, super-sized view.)

I can’t help but feel this is a set geared towards fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which as has been proven time and time again, is exactly what I am). And It’s not only because of the whole “these are bad movies you can laugh at” concept, either; a full half of the selections on here were featured on MST3K. There were a lot of bad movies on the show, yes, but considering one of the films featured here is known solely because of MST3K, well, I don’t think it’s coincidental marketing (or whatever you’d want to call it).

Though as a longtime MSTie, I tend to see allusions to the show where they weren’t intended to be, so take that for what you will.

Like so many budget DVD sets, the titles found here are limited to the realm of the public domain, which I don’t mind a bit. Sure, some of these movies have been making the rounds for decades, going back to the VHS days (I’m looking at you specifically, The Terror), but when they’re put together under the banner of “entertainingly bad films,” it all clicks in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Why pretend these are something they aren’t? It’s a move I absolutely respect, though in all fairness I does loves me a good bad movie (plus that whole MSTie thing); your mileage may vary, however.

However, If I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t really agree that these are all the best of the worst. There’s a few titles that, while undoubtedly ‘bad’ movies, feel more like filler than anything. Like I said before, Mill Creek has put out other similar sets, and it just seems to me that they used up many of their “heavy hitters” already across those. Example: there’s just no reason The Creeping Terror, one of the most infamous bad movies ever, shouldn’t be on here. Keep in mind that Mill Creek did indeed get the rights to release it (contrary to popular belief, it’s not public domain), on their 12 Creature Features set, so the absence of shag carpet monsters and insane narration on The Best of the Worst is a little head scratching. I guess I can see them not wanting to repeat titles across their various sets, which I applaud, but for the films that are here and what this set purports to be overall, it still feels like a particularly glaring omission to me.

Don’t get me wrong though. While I think there could have been just a bit more refinement in the selections, I am overwhelmingly happy with the set. And besides, despite the title, this probably isn’t really intended to be the end-all be-all release of the best bad movies ever. It’s a $5-$10 bargain DVD set, after all; there’s plenty here to justify that small amount, at any rate.

The set consists of three, single-sided discs with four movies on each one. Since many of these are pretty short, it’s not an unreasonable amount. All three discs fit in a regular-sized DVD case, on one single spindle. That means if you want to watch a disc that isn’t directly on top, you’ll have to physically remove one or two discs first, but it’s a small price to pay for such a fantastic load of crappy, crappy movies.

And with that said, lets take a brief look at the actual contents of the set, because hey, that’s what the people want, right?

(I might as well say right now that some of the movies on this set I’m more familiar with than others. Most of them I’ve seen, but some I saw looong ago; I’m not claiming to have sat down and watched every one of these exhaustively while taking notes for this. I’m just giving the straight dope on the set, you make up your own minds from there, paisanos.)

Disc One

The menu for each disc is super simple. What you’re seeing above is basically it. The two film reels in the corners continuously spin, but that’s as close as things get to a “wow!” factor. Not that it really matters, because c’mon, when you’re getting this much bang for your buck, there comes a point when demanding even more turns you from wanting the most for your money into a nitpicky whiner. Cut that stuff out, man. (Says the guy who just complained that The Creeping Terror isn’t here.)

In terms of badness, this first disc is absolutely the roughest of the three. For anyone trying to make it through the whole thing in order, the rest will almost (almost) come as a relief after making it through this one. Disc one includes a bad movie, a really bad movie, and two legitimate contenders for worst film ever. In other words, the entire price of the set is justified in the first disc alone.

Also, all four of these movies appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I’ll say up front that it’s often strange to realize there won’t be any riffs; you’re watching these as-is. The more well-known the respective episode is, the odder it feels, and there are points where you (or at least I) will instinctively think of the appropriate riffs.

Can you say “starting things off with a bang?” Manos: The Hands Of Fate, a film that would have been completely and utterly forgotten after its disastrous 1966 El Paso premiere had it not been for Mystery Science Theater 3000 resurrecting it and turning it into one of the most loved bad movies ever. Despite being movie one, disc one, this is really the centerpiece of The Best of the Worst, as far as I’m concerned. Mill Creek must have realized that, as the portrait of “The Master” under the credits on the back of the DVD make clear. Forget the other 11 movies on the set, Manos alone is worth the price of admission.

The beauty (ha!) of the film is that it’s just such a mess. The camera used could only film 30+ seconds at a time, making for really weird continuity. Furthermore, it was filmed silent, so all of the voices were dubbed in later (at least they didn’t go the hackneyed narration route). The capper? It was very literally made on a bet by an inexperienced El Paso, Texas fertilizer salesman (director-producer-writer-star Harold P. Warren). The plot is all over the place, and the music ranges from awkward to downright unacceptable. Basically, every aspect of the film that can be wrong, is.

But, except for a really screwed up scene during the conclusion, it’s really not a movie you can full-on hate, because it is just so utterly out there. Manos tells the tale of a family stranded at remote lodge that is in actuality the base of operations for a polygamous cult that worships “manos.” There’s “The Master” (who rarely, if ever, approves), his constantly bickering bevy of wives, a necking couple in a car that serves no purpose, and some cops that are even more useless. But the character most everyone loves is big-knee’d, shuffling, twitchy-faced, jerky-voiced Torgo (That’s him above), the caretaker of the lodge. Torgo gets his own goofy theme music and, despite technically being a bad guy, winds up becoming something of an anti-hero, even after he makes the worst pass at a woman outside of me. I have a hard time believing the movie would be so loved if it weren’t for Torgo.

I won’t even try to explain further the wonderfully bizarre circumstances surrounding this film, so let Wikipedia tell you all about it. If you like bad movies but haven’t seen Manos yet, well, it’s pretty hard to top. Like I said before, worth the price of admission alone.

Being on a budget DVD set isn’t necessarily an indicator of public domain status, but word on the street is that this film has indeed lapsed. Which is fine by me, because this is one of the bigger surprises (for me, anyway) on the set. It’s also the newest selection on it, if you can consider 1976 “new.” The subject of one of my very favorite MST3K episodes, this is really bad (and thus, really good) 1970s sci-fi, complete with the dreary color scheme that must have colored the entire decade. It’s just ‘horrific’ enough to satisfy the masses, but just goofy enough to keep things from becoming overly depressing. Featured during the final season, it was and is perfect MST3K fodder for the Sci-Fi Channel era of the show.

Did you know that being hit in the head by a piece of meteorite (“Moon rocks? Oh wow!“) can turn you into killer lizard monster that somehow ties into Native American folklore? Well it can, and to a hapless anthropologist, it does. Also included: Johnny Longbow’s killer stew recipe, a shop that sells both coins and guns, and a tent full of old guys. Oh, and a live performance of the smash hit, “California Lady.” Is it wrong that I’m considering making an MP3 of the song for iTunes?

Now is as good a time as any to mention that the quality of the films on the set vary from feature to feature, but the condition of the prints is overall better that many “cheapie” movie sets out there. Thus far, Track of The Moon Beast looks okay, and Manos is, well, Manos, but the print used for The Beast Of Yucca Flats is absolutely terrific. There are the occasional scratches and dust, but it’s mostly very clean, crisp and clear. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve seen the movie look better.

Which is a hollow victory, because as far as I’m concerned, it’s the worst film in the entire set. The product of Coleman Francis’ fevered mind, and just like everything else Francis set his hand to, it’s a slimy, unpleasant film. Unlike Manos, which is also grimy but also, against all odds, somehow endearing, Beast is just an ugly, ugly movie. Even star Tor Johnson, who I normally find quite entertaining, can’t save it. Say what you want about Ed Wood, Coleman Francis was an infinitely worse filmmaker. I can’t decide if this is better or worse than Francis’ other cinematic abominations, The Skydivers and Red Zone Cuba (both also featured on MST3K), but in the end, if it has Francis’ name on it, there is no genuine “better,” just different levels of “awful.”.

The plot is some tripe about a defecting Soviet scientist (I hope can you buy Tor Johnson as a scientist, because that is exactly what the film posits) that gets caught in a nuclear blast and is turned into a mindless killer. Even the narrator’s deathless non-sequitur of “Flag on the moon; how did it get there?” can’t provide enough comedic momentum to sustain viewers through the 50+ minute (yes, really) running time.

Oh, the narrator? Yeah, this movie has no real dialogue; it’s almost entirely narrated (by Coleman himself), and what in-movie speech there is isn’t actually synchronized with the film; it’s spoken when mouths aren’t clearly visible or even on-screen at all. The Creeping Terror pulled that crap too, but there it wound up funny. Here though, it just makes you resent life and the fact that something like this could not only be made but also released to an unsuspecting public.

I hate this movie and can’t say enough bad things about it, which of course means it’s a perfect addition to the proceedings, simply because of how sickeningly, jaw-droppingly bad it is.

After the soul-crushing saga that is The Beast Of Yucca Flats, Eegah almost comes as a respite, and rest assured, that’s not a statement I make lightly, because there aren’t many instances where Eegah can ever be seen as a respite.

Long story short: a caveman still exists in a California desert, he develops an attraction to a teenage girl, kidnaps her father, kidnaps her, they both get saved by the girl’s guitar-wielding boyfriend (though he doesn’t save them with the guitar; that would be justtoo much!), the caveman follows the whole lot to a pool party, and gets shotted dead. The end.

Eegah is frequently listed as one of the worst films of all-time, a rating that I find just a little overrated. Oh, it’s really bad alright, and there’s an icky shaving scene, an even ickier implication that there was some off-screen romancin’ afoot between the teenage girl and the guy who plays her dad, and an even ickier moment when the girl’s dad basically tells her to put up with Eegah’s affections. There’s even some superfluous songs by the boyfriend (played by Arch Hall Jr., who y’all will recall I met; Arch is a very cool guy and a lot of fun to talk to)!

But, even with all that, I never saw Eegah rising to the levels of near-unwatchability such as, well, the previous movie on this set did. For the most part, it’s 1960’s drive-in schlock, and while it’s certainly terrible, it’s not that terrible. I have a hard time hating anything like this from the decade where, at least on the surface, it’s all meant to be relatively innocent. I guess.

“Watch out for snakes!”

Disc Two

Disc two is probably the least painful in the set. Only one movie on it (The Atomic Brain) is gut-wrenchingly terrible. Unfortunately, as far as that whole “movies so bad they’re good” vibe goes, it’s also where the set loses some steam, and from here on out, things are a bit hit-or-miss. The fun-factor never goes away completely, but after that powerhouse (ha!) of a first disc, well, it’s a hard act to follow.

The Ape Man! Starring Bela Lugosi! Bela is always a plus, and it allows Mill Creek to draw on his name on the back cover. I think Scared To Death may have been a better choice as far as “bad-good” goes (and it’s a color movie, to boot), but I was actually kinda pleased to see The Ape Man here. Though in all honesty, I just kinda skimmed this one here and I don’t recall seeing it in the past, so maybe that’s an unfounded viewpoint.

The plot is formula stuff. Lugosi is a mad scientist whose experiments cause him to turn into the titular character. It’s a poverty row Lugosi flick, though I’m the first to admit that I have a soft spot for those.

And really, that points to my main area of interest with this one: after Dracula succeeded in stereotyping him somethin’ fierce, by the 1940s Lugosi was forced to take on mega-cheap horror/sci-fi flicks not unlike this one. It’s a good example of his film work at the time, to see a legitimate movie legend reduced to movies of this caliber. But, it’s usually fun to see him in anything, and even when it’s a by-the-numbers affair like this, his magnetism can drive the film further than a different actor may have. Plus, the low-budget affairs of the 1930s and 1940s, while obviously not comparable to Universal’s output, can often be pretty entertaining time wasters.

The Amazing Transparent Man, another flick that popped up on MST3K. I first saw it on The Ghoul, waaay back in 1999 or 2000 (I still have my recording of the episode somewhere). Truth be told, it’s another feature that I think really isn’t that bad. I don’t think anyone will claim it to be good, but it’s relatively painless.

The title makes it sound more spectacular than it really is. It’s actually just a low-budget twist on the classic “invisible fella” formula, only this time with a mad scientist trying to create a slew of invisible baddies as part of a world domination scheme. He enlists a criminal to act as a guinea pig and steal the needed ingredients to complete the scheme.

The last MST’d movie on the set, and whoo-boy is it a baddie. This is the low-point of disc two, and it absolutely deserves a place of honor in this collection.

The Atomic Brain is some hokum about a decrepit old woman that wants to switch brains with a younger dame. Eternal youth or some crap like that. Eventually, someone’s brain ends up in the head of a cat somehow. I don’t know, this one causes my eyes to glaze over pretty bad, even on MST3K.

The real eyebrow raiser here is just how sexist the movie is towards women, especially since it is woman as the catalyst for all of these shenanigans.

First off, it was a pain trying to find a good ‘action’ screencap for this one; I was never satisfied with the choices, and even now I’m really not all that happy with my pick. It’s an axe crashing through a wall is what is.

The plot is one of those “fake crime turning into a real one” deals, as a woman trying to scheme her way into a family’s will leads to some very real axe murders.

The really interesting thing about Dementia 13 isn’t so much what it is (though it’s a fairly violent movie for the early-1960s) but rather who was behind it: none other than Francis Ford Coppola! You know, The Godfather guy. Mr. Apocalypse Now himself! And believe it or not, this was his very first ‘legit’ movie! I wouldn’t say it gives much indication of the esteem that would later befall Coppola, though it’s really not all that bad, but it’s most definitely cool to see one of his super early efforts.

Disc Three

Do you mind if I power through this last disc? For as much as I like The Best of the Worst, my enthusiasm for this post is waning fast. Maybe it’s for the best, as in my opinion the last disc is the least interesting of the three. Still, there is entertainment to be had here, though in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t ever seen the last two movies on this disc in their entirety, because frankly, I just don’t care. Does that cause me to lose my reviewer credentials? I don’t care about that, either.

Having been made in the 1950s, nuclear war and whatnot was a particularly major concern, and here, some scientists have devised a tunneling device to burrow deep into the earth to escape said calamity, should it occur. They do just that, and then…nothing much happens. Well, things happen, but none of them are all that interesting. I mean, burrowing into the earth should provide just as much fodder as an outer space plot could, and yet, the movie completely misses the mark.

No, I don’t enjoy this one, not one bit.

The Terror, a movie that I have tried multiple times to like. No kidding, I want to enjoy this one so much, and it just never, never happens. The saturated colors, Gothic scenery, and stars Boris Karloff AND Jack Nicholson (he’s probably pretty proud of this movie) seem like an absolute recipe for a good time, and yet, it just never does it for me. Furthermore, it’s a film I just can’t get away from. I have it so many times over on various budget movie DVDs/tapes/sets, and even recordings on both The Ghoul and Son of Ghoul, and still it only leaves me chilly frosty cold.

Set in the 1800s, Nicholson is a Napoleonic soldier (the role he was born to play!) that winds up at Karloff’s castle and right into a ghostly scenario. Karloff is being haunted by the ghost of a woman he killed, which in turn is under the control of a witch, and then some stuff happens and it ends.

Really, aside from a couple scenes of rotting corpses and a relatively graphic falcon (?) attack, there’s not a whole lot memorable about this one, and truth be told, I have a hard time following the plot. Rumor has it that this was made in only a couple of days, and, well, it shows.

Man I want to like this movie!

Don’t get too excited, the title seems more lurid than the actual movie, though you’ll be pleased to know it stars Uncle Fester. Some crap about a scientist in Mexico creating animals from humans or humans from animals or I don’t even know. The movie is public domain, I don’t have to worry about providing a satisfactory summary. Here, go to Wikipedia and learn all about it!

And finally, no bad movie collection would be complete without a contribution from Jerry Warren, and here it is. The quality looks like it comes from a VHS tape and some of the dialogue is unintelligible. It sounds like it’s a suckier version of Unknown World, though I refuse to take a closer look at the actual movie to back those claims up. Here, Wikipedia is yo’ frien’ again.

I love this set. I really do. The mere sight of it fills me with joy. Yeah, it kinda runs out of steam for me by the end, but the concept alone is just so cool that I don’t really mind. It’s absolutely worth the couple of bucks it fetches wherever you may find it, so yeah, if it crosses your path, I’d say give it a go.

Hey, Mill Creek, how about a Volume 2? You’ve already got a guaranteed sale in me, and isn’t that what it’s really all about?

Man, I used to tape a lot of stuff, so much so that it’s not uncommon for me to come across something I recorded myself back in the day and yet have NO recollection of ever doing so. (See: this post.) When it came to all of the crap things I taped, I like to think that I have a pretty good memory, but I’ve been genuinely surprised by what I recorded years ago enough times to realize that my mental synapses aren’t always untouchable when it comes to this sort of thing.

While this particular broadcast isn’t one I had completely and totally forgotten about capturing, I only retained the vaguest memories of taping it. For obvious reasons, I’m sure glad I did, though. Behold: from WJW 8, it’s Big Chuck & Lil John’s Saturday afternoon “Pregame Show,” from 2003. Has it really been 12 years since this first aired? I refuse to believe it’s been 12 years. I was 17 years old! A junior in high school!

Truth be told, I’m really not sure what drove me to record this. I was of course a full-fledged Big Chuck & Lil’ John fan by 2003, but, aside from a few scattered instances (such as the one seen in this post), I didn’t really tape their show(s) that often. Thanks to those aforementioned super-vague memories, I seem to recall there being something ostensibly special about this broadcast. Maybe I thought it would be a one-off kinda thing?

No matter, because I taped it, I saved it, and thus, here we are.

Even though the branding is never used here, make no mistake, this is really an installment of Couch Potato Theater, Big Chuck & Lil’ John’s long-running Saturday afternoon showcase, which was always in addition to their regular late night program (they had moved to Saturday nights after MadTV by this point). The features shown during Couch Potato Theater varied from week-to-week; could be a movie, could be old comedy shorts, could be episodes of The Abbott And Costello Show. Or, as in this case, it could be just be skits.

As implied by the whole “Pregame” thing, this episode preceded baseball on WJW 8 that day (actually, it precedes a local special on football and an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer before the game, a difference of scheduling that is noted during the show). As such, it’s a half-hour show made up entirely of skits.

Actually, one thing I really like about this broadcast is just how much it reminds me of Big Chuck & Lil’ John’s current show: 30 minutes of skits with the occasional host segment. One major difference between now and then, besides the set and live audience of the old days I mean, is how ‘current’ they were back in the day; references and reminders of what was going on around Northeast Ohio, including where they would be appearing in person (indeed, as per an announcement from Chuck, they were appearing somewhere following this very episode), was a constant part of their hosting duties. Not so hard to understand, since they were (I’m guessing) in the studio quite a bit back then. It’s a much simpler affair nowadays, though anything that keeps Big Chuck & Lil’ John on the air is fine by me.

(Speaking of on the air: up until a few months ago, WJW was running Big Chuck & Lil’ John’s new show in a Saturday11:30 AM time slot, which reminded me even more of the old Couch Potato Theater days. They’ve since moved them to 11;30 PM, Sundays. I DVR the show no matter what, so the time change doesn’t impact me all that much, but I preferred Saturday mornings solely due to that nostalgia element it presented. There was just something about kicking off your Saturday with Chuck & John!)

Being only 30 minutes in length (or, if you want to be really anal, about 28 minutes; the next show didn’t start immediately after this one, dig?), I naturally don’t have a whole lot to work with here, even if I do find it incredibly cool and undeniably nostalgic. But, I’ll give it a shot.

First up, the skits themselves:

Muldoon’s Bar

One of my all-time favorites, though I’m pretty sure it’s just a filmed version of an old joke. “Resident Irishman” Tom Bush plays Paddy, who every week or so enters Muldoon’s Bar for two shots of Irish whiskey: one for him, and one to drink for his brother back in Ireland (“To his health!”). One week, he stops at the bar, but only orders a single shot. The bartender is understandably concerned about Paddy’s brother back in Ireland, but when questioned, Paddy reveals the truth: his brother is fine, and in fact, the one shot he drinks is for him. So why not the second shot? Because Paddy gave up drinking for Lent! I love it!

The Amazing Stanley

You can almost see where this one is going from the start. it’s the classic “sawing a woman in half” magic routine, which “The Amazing Stanley” performs to the satisfaction of the crowd. It’s only backstage that the “magic” of the illusion is seen: it’s been two little people curled up in the individual sections of the box! It’s a trip seeing John in high heels, and as per the host segment following the skit, the woman is played by John’s real-life sister.

Rockhead

The Rockhead skits were never my favorites, though I think there were only a few of them. It’s a parody of Rocky, obviously. In this one, Rockhead is training for his big fight with “Alonzo,” while fake Adrian continuously nags him to give up boxing and instead take a steady job as a delivery boy for Rego’s Supermarket. Rockhead always gives the idea the brush off, until he disturbs Alonzo during his training; Alonzo angrily crashing through the wall is enough for Rockhead to immediately change his plans for the future. Fun fact: Chuck’s Rockhead wears a Ghoul sweatshirt throughout the entire skit!

Art Modell’s Back!

Even though he passed away three years ago, Art Modell still isn’t the most popular guy in Northeast Ohio. But back in 2003, the hate for him was pretty venomous. He took away our Browns, man! This sketch plays into that sentiment. In it, Modell is seen talking on the phone and snickering; turns out Cleveland wants him back! We just couldn’t live without him! The pay-off to the skit is that he is indeed brought back to Cleveland…selling hot dogs! And to further insult him, he’s seen calling after people asking if the men’s toilets are backed up while holding up a plunger!

Obviously, there’s no way the real Art Modell was going to come back to Cleveland just to film a skit ragging on him. Instead, “Art” is either seen from behind or, using the same technology as Clutch Cargo and Conan O’Brien, with a pair of live-action, talking lips superimposed over a still image of his head.

It’s a very, very Cleveland sketch, needless to say.

$10 Magic Wands

A pretty well-known skit. A sidewalk salesman tries to sucker John’s character into buying a magic wand for the low, low price of $10. The prospective customer is apprehensive until he sees the magic wand instantaneously produce a beautiful girl right before his very eyes! He quickly buys a wand, and the salesman sneaks off. The Purchaser’s attempt at using the wand produces a woman alright, albeit one of a rather more robust variety, who then proceeds chase him around as the skit ends.

Madame Mary

Another skit I’m pretty sure is just a filmed version of an old joke. In fact, I know it is; variations of the gag are really pretty common. In this version, an old man goes to visit fortune teller “Madame Mary,” and asks her if there is pro football in Heaven. The good news? Yes, there is indeed pro football in heaven. The bad news? He has box seats for the next game!

Ben Crazy

A classic. The Ben Crazy skits are always welcome, and this is a particularly good entry. The scene opens on a group of doctors drawing lots. One Dr. White wins, much to the chagrin of everyone else. He then enters a hospital room and informs a “Ms. Goodbody” that it’s time for her morning shot. Obviously, this is not a shot in the arm! So that’s why they were drawing lots!

The Certain Ethnic Artist

Another really good one. Chuck’s classic Stash character is the “certain ethnic artist.” He’s seen painting a portrait of John, the results of which, well, you can see above.

Okay, so that does it for the skits themselves, but what about the host segments? I’m so used to Chuck & John only appearing intermittently during the new show that I had forgotten just how many there were back then; they follow every single skit! For the most part, I like the batch of skits seen in this episode, but as far as I’m concerned, the real heart lies in the host segments. Just seeing Chuck & John on that classic set takes me back like you wouldn’t believe.

Did you notice the pizza box on the table in the host segment screencap way at the start of this post? That was your first clue that quite a bit of the host segments are dedicated to pitching Pizza Pan pizza (alliteration). Pizza Pan was a big sponsor of Big Chuck & Lil’ John at the time. The fellas even did a number of commercials for the company (I’ve got a few). Chuck & John make a point of showing off the pizza box and mentioning the company numerous times during the episode. This is borderline The Pizza Pan Big Chuck & Lil’ John Show!

The gimmick of Pizza Pan was this: order a pizza and have it delivered, you got an extra pizza free. Even better, order a pizza and pick it up yourself, you got two free pizzas! Obviously, a deal like that is going to attract some attention, and for a time, Pizza Pan was pretty ubiquitous in Northeast Ohio. I certainly partook of the ‘Pan more than once. Why? Chuck & John told me to. (Also, free pizza is always nice.)

At one point during the show, the owner of Pizza Pan himself joins Chuck & John onstage to further promote the company. Not only is a special deal mentioned (free ribs when a pizza is ordered – at the Mentor location only), but also the then-recent expansion of the company to more areas. I wasn’t kidding, there was a time in the early-to-mid-2000s when Pizza Pan was a pretty big local chain.

And then, it just sort of seemed to fade away. I seem to recall, though don’t quote me on this because my memory isn’t that clear on the matter, that after awhile the free pizza deal was done away with. If that is indeed what happened, I guess I can understand it; the whole free pizza thing was what the company built its success on!

There are a few locations still around though. As to whether the free pizza deal was brought back or not, I couldn’t say (the official website seems to only give me the current locations and the ability to order online). Check the official website out to see if there’s one near you.

Finally, the pregame show ends with a mention of their feature for their normal, late night program: Rocky II! They both seem quite excited by this, not only because they had run the original Rocky the week before, but also because this is apparently the third good movie they’ve had in a row, though what entailed the third movie in that line-up isn’t stated.

Now is as good a time as any to mention that I love the old movie bumpers Big Chuck & Lil’ John used for their films. The Rocky II one above is a good example. There’s something just so right about them, though my nostalgia obviously plays a part in that feeling.

(By the way: I didn’t notate on the tape when this originally aired, but Bob “Hoolihan” Wells’ 70th birthday is mentioned as coming up on September 27th, and this episode followed my recording of Conan O’Brien’s 10th anniversary show and preceded Saturday Night Live‘s 29th season premiere. Those aired September 14th and October 4th, respectively, and with the help of this calendar, it pretty much has to be September 20, 2003. I can’t see a way that it’s not!)

Anyway, during these broadcast recaps, I usually look at some of the interesting (to me) commercials found during the respective airing. Being only half an hour, again, I’ve only got so much to work with, and frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot that stood out to me. BUT, there were two I couldn’t end the article without taking a quick look at:

Buddy’s Carpet Ad

Buddy’s Carpet! At one time, it was pretty difficult to watch local TV in Northeast Ohio without seeing at least one Buddy’s Carpet ad. Initially, Buddy himself pitched the company in these commercials, though later on a woman (his daughter, I guess?) took over those duties. As evidenced above, this is one of those later commercials. No matter, because it still gives me a far bigger nostalgic charge than any carpet commercial has a right to.

Buddy’s Carpet is still around, though like Pizza Pan, it seems the locations are more limited now. Check them out here.

Regency Windows Ad

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that up until fairly recently, I didn’t realize I hadn’t seen a Regency Windows ad on TV in a long, long time. Just like Buddy’s Carpet, their commercials were nearly omnipresent on Northeast Ohio TV. Most of them featured owner and spokesman Mikey (that’s him above) screaming “I’m gonna save you a lotttttttta money!” This ad is (probably) one of the few where he doesn’t give his famous line, but he’s still there, and he’s still excitable, so it’s not a total loss.

Turns out Regency Windows closed some years ago, though what remained of the company was purchased by Window Nation. That official website is here.

For what is only a 30 minute recording, this one actually packs quite a nostalgic wallop for me. Besides the whole Big Chuck & Lil’ John Saturday afternoon thing (which is more than enough by itself), there’s also Pizza Pan, Buddy’s Carpet, Regency Windows (and more specifically, Regency’s Mikey), and of course, the skits.

Also, It’s amazing to realize that in 2003, in four years Chuck would retire and they’d be off the air entirely, but in less than 10 years, they’d be back hosting a show that is very reminiscent of this (and other, I’m sure) pregame episodes, a show which continues to this day. If there’s one thing I love about Northeast Ohio, it’s that more than once, our movie hosts have not gone quietly into the figurative night. One way or another, they find their way back!

(Caution: this is an article by an MSTie, so beware of some “technical” jargon y’all non-MSTies might not understand.)

Well lookee what your Northeast Ohio Video Hunter dids dones did dugged up! While going through boxes of tapes, I came across the VHS recording I made of Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s final Sci-Fi Channel broadcast, waaaaay back in 2004 (January 31, to be exact). The episode? 912 – The Screaming Skull (with the Gumby short Robot Rumpus). The time? Saturday morning, 9 AM. The feeling? Well, kinda downbeat, honestly. For as good as this episode was/is, it couldn’t quite overcome the feeling that something special was passing by.

By 2004, I had long captured, on good ol’ VHS, all of the remaining episodes that Sci-Fi could legally air (except for a Blood Waters Of Dr. Z re-broadcast – of course the VCR died for that one), which naturally already included episode 912. This, this broadcast, however, it didn’t really matter what the actual episode was; this was all about partaking in the last Mystery Science Theater 3000 on actual television for the foreseeable future. As it turned out, it would be back in about 10 years, but of course no one knew that at the time. There had been so many rights issues with the movies featured on the show over the years that, for all anyone knew, this was it. ‘Course, we still had the official DVD releases, and the tape trading circles, but even to this day there’s just something about actually tuning in to MST3K that feels so right. At least, that’s how I feel about it; your mileage may vary.

I explained this all a bit better in that older post I linked to, but long story short: I began watching the show when it moved to the Sci-Fi Channel 1997, and by the summer, I was a die-hard MSTie, which I obviously remain to this day. At the time, you needed a cable box to access Sci-Fi, and unfortunately, my dad decided he didn’t want to spend the extra bucks for the box anymore. Thus, that began a period of living with what I had already recorded, getting others to record episodes for me, and the official VHS releases that were trickling out.

That is, until early 2002, when I discovered Sci-Fi had been added to the basic cable line-up. Thanks to Satellite News’ helpful schedule archives, I can pinpoint when exactly I was able to finally see the show on real TV again (via a nearby relative’s house, because at that point we didn’t even have basic cable): February 23, 2002, episode 911- Devil Fish. I was elated (though it figures that the episode largely responsible for turning me into an MSTie, 811 – Parts: The Clonus Horror, had what turned out to be its last Sci-Fi airing about a month prior – just missed it!).

It was a ‘reunion’ that lasted nearly 2 years, and it all came to an end with this one last broadcast.

Honestly, I can’t believe it’s been over 10 years since this aired. 2004 just does not seem that long ago! I was a junior in high school!

It’s important to note that this wasn’t the actual series finale of Mystery Science Theater 3000; that happened back in 1999, with episode 1013 – Diabolik (though thanks to a rights snafu, episode 1003 – Merlin’s Shop Of Mystical Wonders wound up airing first-run about a month after said series finale, giving heartbroken MSTies one last bit of shiny new freshness). Rather, this was the last episode everbroadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Y’see, after the show finished with new episodes in 1999, it went into endless repeats on Sci-Fi, eventually languishing in a Saturday morning time slot where it would remain for the rest of its time on the channel. Advertising had long, long stopped being run for MST3K, so outside of the fan circles, it was just kind of ‘there,’ treated no better than Saturday morning filler. We MSTies knew better, though; unbeknownst to most, this was the way to kick off your Saturday.

So, after two whole cable channels and having run since 1989 (technically, three channels since 1988, for you lucky Minnesotans who got to watch the series start on the local independent station KTMA TV-23), it all came down to this one last broadcast on January 31, 2004. Well, until Retro TV picked the series up 10 years later, anyway.

“Robot Rump?! Oh…” – Servo

Here’s the deal with episodes of this series: they can be very, very subjective. Because opinions on movies and humor can vary so greatly from person to person, there’s always going to be someone who loves a certain episode to death, while someone else will hate it with a passion. From my viewpoint, 912 is a very good episode. Maybe not a start-to-finish smash, but mostly good host segments, fantastic riffing on the short, and a solid take on the movie. There are undoubtedly people out there that will disagree with that assessment, and hey, that’s cool, too.

912 may not be the all-out, blaze-of-glory episode many would have preferred for the final Sci-Fi broadcast, but it is a solid, enjoyable from start-to-finish episode, which seems just as fitting to me. Maybe because it’s so representative of MST3K as it often was: maybe not every riff connected throughout, but the episode was overall consistently funny nevertheless. I wasn’t kidding a bit ago, by 2004 there really was no better way to start your Saturday.

The one aspect of this episode that most fans seem to agree about: the short film preceding the movie is phenomenal. The shorts were a rarity during the Sci-Fi-era, there were only three of ’em total, but man, quality over quantity. Of the three, I easily give the edge to this one, the Gumby epic Robot Rumpus. This might as well have been made for MST3K, because it fits like a glove.

“It’s a fair-to-partly cottony day.” – Crow

Truthfully, there are some shorts in the MST3K canon that no longer have me rolling the way they did the first few times I watched them; Chicken Of Tomorrow (from 702 – The Brute Man) used to be one of my favorites, but after the last few viewings, well, it has left me a bit cold. Robot Rumpus, on the other hand, I’ve seen this one so many times that by this point I’m fairly certain I’m never going to get tired of it. It starts out hilarious and stays right there. By the time a shot of Pokey prompts Mike to quip “Close-ups reveal the weakness of the whole premise,” I was done for. This one seems to get better each time I watch it.

The plot is, well, it’s a clay-animated Gumby short with the title Robot Rumpus, so don’t expect Shakespeare, alright? In this one, Gumby, rather than do his yardwork chores himself, gets a bunch of robots to do them for him. Things start out peacefully enough, but they soon go haywire; gardens are ruined, paint is thrown about, and a house is lifted off its foundation before Gumby’s pop Gumbo shows to help put things back in order. I’m tempted to call this the weirdest thing ever, but kids programming is by nature usually pretty weird, so it would be an entirely redundant statement (plus, I’m watching a show where a guy and his two robots are trapped in space and forced to watch bad movies; I love MST3K, but I’ll never say the premise isn’t a bit out there – that’s one of the reasons it’s so great!).

Also, it’s nice to know that Gumby holds a Class F license.

“Okay, who turned up the heat in the hot tub?” – Servo

A common charge against some of the episodes with particularly strong shorts before the main movie is that the feature never sustains the momentum of the short. I wouldn’t say this is true 100% of the time, but there are episodes where the short overshadows the movie somethin’ awful. So what am I even babbling about?

In the case of 912, you’ve got two forces contrasting each other as much as two forces can be, erm…contrasted? What I’m saying is you’ve got a loud, colorful, clay animated short intended for the lil’ baby childrens, and a long, black & white, slow-moving, drab horror movie for the older set (and by “older set” I don’t mean the “adult” set so much as I do “necking teenagers at the drive-in who couldn’t care less about a skull or why it happens to emitting loud decibels” set). The two don’t really pair well together, for obvious reasons.

And yet, together on Mystery Science Theater 3000, somehow it all works. True, the riffing of The Screaming Skull isn’t on the same level as Robot Rumpus, but with such a dramatic shift in tone, I don’t think you could really expect it to be. That said, I really enjoy The Screaming Skull portion of 912. Any movie that starts off with the promise of a free coffin for anyone that dies of fright during it is setting itself up for some quality riffin’, and Mike & The Bots live up to the challenge. I found myself laughing quite a bit throughout the entire feature-portion of the show (some of the riffing on the good Reverend Snow in particular is fantastic; during a conversation in which perpetually-worried-face Jenni unloads her emotional burden to him, Mike’s “You know, the Gospel speaks of losers like you…” and Crow’s semi-cheery “Oh, well it’s hell for you then!” had me roaring).

The screencap above makes this one seem more action packed than it really is. The fact of the matter is not a whole lot happens (not until the very end, anyway). This is one of those plots you can more or less figure out from the title and first 5-10 minutes of the film or so.

In it, newlyweds Jenni and Eric begin their new life together by moving into the house in which Eric and his first wife Marion lived before her untimely death. Also, she died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Also, Jenni used to be in a mental institution. Also, Jenni is rich. Where this is all going couldn’t be any more obvious if someone wrote the entire plot out on a brick and threw it at your face. I’m pretty sure children are born with the knowledge of where this is all heading.

So yeah, Eric tries to drive his new wife batty (again) and thus to suicide by convincing her the house is haunted by the ghost of his first wife, her skull in particular, which naturally only Jenni can see.

…Except there’s a twist here. For the stunning (?) climax, The real ghost of Marion shows up, announcing her presence first by chasing Jenni around (which kinda irritates me, since Jenni didn’t really do anything to draw the ire of the apparition, except maybe keeping her face in an almost constantly pinched expression), and then straight up killing Eric (that’s what you’re seeing in the screencap above).

If I’m being completely honest, yes, it’s a dull film with loooong sequences of nothing in particular really happening. BUT, it’s not that bad. I mean, yes, it is bad, no question, but it’s basically inoffensive 1950s drive-in fare. There were infinitely more disgusting things ran on Mystery Science Theater 3000. In comparison to, say, The Beast Of Yucca Flats, The Screaming Skull actually looks pretty derned good (then again, what doesn’t?). And, even though it takes forever to get there, some of the climatic scenes are actually pretty effective, provided you can ignore Eric clearly holding a plastic skull to his neck, and the infamous tossing-a-stool-at-the-ghost scene (which became this episode’s stinger). The movie itself almost lends an easygoing vibe to this episode as a whole, which is weird since it concerns a guy trying to kill his wife with a plastic skull.

The proceedings aren’t overly painful, is what I’m trying to explain.

Oh, and there’s a Torgo-esque gardener named Mickey. He provides some unintended levity to the proceedings, though he’s still a distant third behind Torgo and Ortega in the “really, really weird lackey that probably needs a shower” category.

The host segments for this episode, like I said before, they’re “mostly good.” I wasn’t super impressed with Tom Servo turning into a butterfly or Pearl, Observer & Bobo tricking Mike & The Bots into costumes for no real reason. But on the other hand, Servo attempting to scam a free coffin is good, and Bobo being shrunk via the most non-existent special effect possible at the end is funny.

But, my favorite host segment is seen above: Crow decides to scare Mike by being a “screaming skull.” Unfortunately, his (fairly wimpy) scream causes Mike to flip out and continuously scream in terror as he beats Crow over the head with a variety of objects (the best scene of the segment is Mike carefully deciding on the perfect golf club to hit Crow with, all while still screaming). The host segments of MST3K can often be a mixed bag, and this episode is no exception, but this moment in particular is a bonafide winner.

I said way up above that advertising for MST3K had basically disappeared from the station following the 1999 series finale. If there were any kind of promos for the series in general following that, I’m unaware of them. I’m guessing there may have been one for Merlin’s Shop Of Mystical Wonders, and Satellite News shows a mini-marathon of episodes at the end of 1999, which I cant imagine there not being some kind of advertising for that. But following all that, MST3K finished life on Sci-Fi strictly on Saturday mornings. When I was able to watch the show in “real time” again in 2002, I certainly never saw any advertising. I want to say there was a “coming up next” deal prior to episodes starting, but even if that’s so, that’s more of a courtesy than anything.

Anyway, in regards to this January 31 broadcast, the only thing even in the ballpark of advertising is what you’re seeing above: the little ‘banner’ at the bottom of the screen, reminding you of what you’re watching. Granted, it was common to Sci-Fi programming at the time, and they also take the opportunity to tell you what’s coming up next (in this case, Fright Night 2), but still, it’s nice to see that even in that little itty bitty way, MST3K was still on Sci-Fi’s radar. Kinda.

While on the subject of advertising, thus far this has been more of an episode review. Which is fine, because after years of hoping and praying, it was finally released officially in the Volume XXXI Turkey Day DVD set. I probably wouldn’t put 912 in my top 10 favorite episodes ever list, but I do like it plenty. Top 20, maybe.

However, this article is supposed to be about the larger broadcast picture. Sure, the episode itself is the main point, but what definitively places things in a certain time and place are the commercials. Just like my other ‘broadcast recap’ posts, I like to finish up with a look at those.

The problem here is that, being from 2004, most of the commercials, well, they aren’t that great. 2004 is just too new to be all that interesting. Still, I’d be remiss in whatever it is that can be considered my duties if I didn’t give at least a quick look at them, so here now are some of the better ones (in my opinion, anyway) that were seen during Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s Sci-Fi farewell broadcast on January 31, 2004:

Sci-Fi Channel Stargate SG-1 / Code Name: Eternity Promo

Hey, you all remember Stargate SG-1, don’t you? Sure you do! After all, it was only on for about 47 years. It was about MacGyver and a guy with a Dodge Ram logo on his forehead going through adventures in outer space or something like that.

Easy SG-1 fans, of course I jest. It was actually a pretty good show, at least what I saw of it when it was in syndication (around here it was WJW TV-8 on weekend afternoons, if I recall correctly). This promo, obviously, spotlights the show after new episodes were moved from Showtime to Sci-Fi.

As for Code Name: Eternity, never saw it. Apparently it was a 1999 Canadian series that only ran a season and then showed up on Sci-Fi. Ain’t I helpful?

BarNone Auto Loans Ad

I had almost completely wiped this series of ads from my memory. BarNone Auto Loans are still around, and at the time they had a line of commercials featuring a dog sock puppet (apparently originally a Pets.com mascot, though I really have totally forgotten all about that hoopla) pitching the company. So, yeah.

Office Max Highlighters Ad

This one spotlights (see what I did there HAW HAW HAW) Office Max’s special brand of highlighters, and centers around one employee’s convoluted “too sick to work” scheme, which fails spectacularly. At least I think that’s plot of the commercial, I didn’t bother to save it to the PC and I refuse to go back and check. I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s about.

Geico Gecko Ad

Geez oh man, it can be hard to realize that Geico’s Gecko has been around for basically forever at this point. I also find it troubling that I can tell his accent is slightly different in this ad from what it is nowadays, even though I’m hardly a Geico Gecko expert. In this installment in the long running series, a boy sleeps while his two robot toys prepare to duke it out. That is, until the Gecko steps forward to pontificate about Geico, much to the amazement of said toys.

Cabin Fever On DVD & VHS Ad

Yes, they were still releasing commercial movies on VHS in 2004. That wouldn’t last a whole lot longer. My reasons for including this one have less to do with the movie (I have never seen Cabin Fever nor do I have any interest in seeing Cabin Fever) and the odds were good that I would have ended up skipping this one entirely (a fate that befell a Burger King ad featuring Steve Harvey trying to come up with a combination name for “sandwich” and “salad”), until I realized it starred Shawn from Boy Meets World. Though, that’s really all I have to say about it. So, thank my TGIF nostalgia for this entry, I guess.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles On Nintendo Gamecube Ad

Hey, a commercial I can almost get excited for! I say “almost” because aside from the very first installment for NES, I have never played a Final Fantasy game. And, since I generally don’t care for most RPGs, I really have no interest in even that one. In other words, I haven’t playedFinal Fantasy Crystal Chroniclesand you can’t make me.

HOWEVER, the poor Nintendo Gamecube, while maintaining a cult following, was basically getting clobbered by Sony’s Playstation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox at the time. Since Final Fantasy is indeed a big name in the game world, it was nice to see it show up on Nintendo’s underrated console; from a sales-standpoint, it needed all the help it could get (that’s not a slam, either; I had a Gamecube, still do somewhere in fact, and it was definitely a lot of fun, but the system really was an object of derision among most of my PS2-owning friends, which I think was representative of teenagers in general).

At any rate, old video game ads are always a nice example of the time in which they were broadcast. So, 2004, Gamecube, there you go.

Next On Sci-Fi Promo

Found during the final commercial break of the broadcast, this was a short promo for what was coming up next on Sci-Fi. Fright Night II (hey, it was listed as Fright Night 2 before!) and HalloweenII & III would take you up through midday that Saturday. While I’ll never claim to have much interest in any of those films, does Sci-Fi even play movies like them anymore? Of course it’s “SyFy” nowadays, but at last check (and it really has been awhile), it was all homemade SyFy exclusives and whatnot. Then again, I don’t watch the station anymore, so what do I know?

And so, Mystery Science Theater 3000 came to an end on the Sci-Fi Channel. Never has a show-ending stinger felt so bittersweet. We had our tapes, we had our DVDs, but what we didn’t have was knowledge of when or if we’d ever see our favorite show being broadcast again.

A lot of the “specialness” of this recording has dissipated over the years, but for once, this is a good thing. We MSTies have been given what could be described as the royal treatment. MST3K has been making a comeback on actual TV, the DVDs are profuse, and most of the people involved with the show are still out there cranking out the comedy in various forms.

Still, it’s a tape that captures that moment in time when a lot (but not all) of that was still up in the air, and for that, I’m glad I still have it.

Plus, you know, it’s a good episode I like to watch every now and then. Kinda easy to forget that when I’m busy pontificating about (real or imagined?) specialness and whatnot.

Man, that image above still brings a tear to my eye. Figuratively, I mean. After all, it’s just a show, I should just relax and all that jazz.